


Valley of Serenity

by Interjection



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Basically they nope the hell out of DSMP and build up a farm, Dave | Technoblade and Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit are Siblings, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Insane Wilbur Soot, Mental Health Issues, November 16, Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Philza Has Wings, Running Away, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, Sort Of, Therapy, TommyInnit Angst (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit Swears (Video Blogging RPF), Unreliable Narrator, Wilbur Soot Needs a Hug, all of them. they're all unreliable, at least to each other, but its the whole family, canon divergence after Nov 16, meanwhile Tubbo's probably having a meltdown, theres some Minecraft elements but the world doesn't operate on Minecraft rules, they all actually try to be better people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 51,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27758548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interjection/pseuds/Interjection
Summary: “You think I would kill my own son?”After Wilbur presses the button, Techno unleashes the withers, and Tommy watches heroes crumble before his eyes, Philza decides it’s time for them all to leave those scarred, blown up lands behind and reconcile in peace.So, in a small seaside village far, far away from dreams of power and madness and revolution, a family slowly heals.
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & Phil Watson, Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit, Dave | Technoblade & Wilbur Soot, Dave | Technoblade & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 1365
Kudos: 4328
Collections: MCYT Fic Rec, The Reasons For My Insomnia, sleepy bois inc, smp stuff





	1. beyond lies the refuse and regret of its creation

L'Manberg was a nation doomed to fall the moment Wilbur shoved aside a desperately pleading Tommy to accept the bundles of TNT and dynamite Dream had laid out like a godly blessing before him, mouth in a twisted smile and pupils too wide for any sane man. Fate carved as solidly as the scattered lyrics in the cave which housed that damned button and the damned madman who circled around it like a haunted specter.

The madman who had, ultimately, decided to blow up his symphony to a ruined, desolate end. 

L’Manberg was a nation beyond saving, and it had been for a long time.

Phil firmly believes, however, that the madman in question is _ not _ beyond saving. 

"Kill me, Phil, kill me-"

The sword clatters to the ground. Phil barely registers the blinding glint of diamond again harsh, judging sunlight.

He picks up the sword. Studies it's tiny nicks and shimmering surface and well worn grip. He can tell it's a good sword, a reliable one. 

The scent of smoke that clings to their lungs and scratches their eyes is palpable.

Wilbur stares into the blade with a hungry expression, like that of a man who has nothing left to anticipate in his life but the release of death. His gaze shifts up to Philza after a second, pleading, eager, arms spread wide in invitation.

_ Please, they all want you too, nothing would make me happier- _

Phil throws down the sword against the cracked and crumbling stone beneath them. He kicks it with an unexpected ferocity and it skids away in spinning circles, eventually tumbling off the ledge they’re standing on. After a few seconds, a faint splash echoes in his ears.

He barely registers the expression of shock and terror on Wilbur's face before he's cradling him against his chest, wrapping him in a tight embrace. Wilbur shakes tightly in his grasp, more vulnerable than the day Phil had first found him wandering alone in the dark, dangerous world.

"You think I would kill my own son?"

Philza is a father. And he has failed. And he will make things right again.

~*~

Slowly, he tugs Wilbur away from the ruins of L’Manberg.

In Techno’s base, he takes out a piece of crumpled paper and begins writing.

_ Techno, Tommy. I’m taking Wilbur and getting us out of DSMP lands. Meet us if you want to join. We’ll leave in 4 days if you don’t. _

Phil scribbles on directions, and carefully folds it up. Lays it out in the hidden sugarcane chest he knows Techno will check when he gets back.

Wilbur stands beside him, eyes hollow and head bowed. Phil places a hand on his shoulder and guides him to the bubble elevator.

~*~

“Where are you taking me?” Wilbur asks, and the lilt of desperation in his tone suggests he still hopes his own father would drive a blade through his heart.

“Away,” Phil says quietly to him, trying to keep his own heart together. He tugs Wilbur along. “Away from here.”

They travel until sunset, and to Phil’s immense relief, Wilbur doesn’t try and stop a single time.

~*~

It’s in a birchwood forest, shadows rippling with the dusky sunset and swaying leaves, that they stop. 

There’s a small wooden shelter deep within it, one Phil had built to keep out monsters for the night during his trip to Dream’s lands. He takes out some wood and wool from his ender chest, fixes another rough bed for Wilbur, and tells him to sleep.

“Please, Wil,” Phil whispers when Wilbur stares at him blankly. He gently pushes him onto the fluffy wool. 

Slowly, Wilbur takes off his boots. Lies down. Closes his eyes. Phil tugs the makeshift blanket he had made over him. 

He thanks his past self for over-preparedness as he digs through his ender chest yet again and finds slices of raw beef and bundles of carrots. 

Phil makes and eats a small meal for himself. Afterwards, he watches Wilbur sleep from the edge of his eyes as he paces.

His son stirs fitfully in his sleep, gasping yells and convulsions and pleads for death interrupting every other minute. Eventually, it is all Phil can do to hum lullabies and whisper soothing reassurances while he holds him close.

He doesn't sleep a single second himself for the entire night.

~*~

On the 2nd day, Techno knocks on the door. 

“Why?” Wilbur asks as Techno unclasps his cape and shrugs on the dark, woolen longcoat Phil offers him.

“They’re rebuilding Manberg,” Techno says. “Trying to on what’s left of it, anyway - can’t really call it Manberg anymore. Didn't learn my lesson, and I’m not bothering to teach them again.”

Phil places a hand on his shoulder. Techno hesitates.

“And - and you don’t need help there anymore,” he mumbles. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Wilbur echoes. “I’m here, and you’re here.”

“Yes, Wil. We’re both here with you,” Phil says. He sits down next to him, and envelops him in another hug. A few moments later, Techno does the same.

Wilbur closes his eyes as tears gather at their edges. Phil gently brushes them away.

~*~

2 more days tick by, and Phil has given up on Tommy. 

Perhaps some things can never be forgiven by some, he thinks as he packs up what few items are left. The burn scars running like tear trails across Tubbo’s body, or…

L’Manberg. Insanity. Devastation and craters and the ashen remains of emancipation. Forcing Tommy to choose.

To be the hero, and to lose it all… all over again. 

With a heavy heart, he continues packing. 

It is fine. He has three sons, two of whom are with him, and he will take care of them. Tommy has his own family and circle now.

As they prepare to leave the ramshackle building, Phil taking Wilbur’s hand and guiding him along-

“Wait!”

~*~

“Child,” Techno rolls his eyes as Tommy proclaims his desire to go with them with nothing but a set of iron tools and a bag of food and water slung behind him. 

Wilbur stares at Tommy like they have both become ghosts.

Phil is too busy fitting a long green coat over his son’s shoulders and beaming with happiness to take much notice. 

~*~

The world is a vast place, cycles of continents and oceans stretching further than most can travel in half their lifetimes. Most people did not bother to travel in their lifetimes.

Phil, however, is not “most people,” and neither are his sons. Dream may have shut off End access in his kingdom and surrounding areas, but it is hardly a monopoly. End portals are scattered around the world, and Phil has conquered the infamously treacherous dimension in a way few can boast of.

“Put these on,” Phil says when they reach the end of a sheer, giant cliffside, the sharp, cool wind flinging his hair like strips of flags. He hands them each an elytra and a bundle of rockets.

Beyond them, a vast, open prairie stretches out, followed by increasingly dense forests. To the northeastern side he can make out the faint shape of pale blue mountains, immensely giant and imposing.

“Where are we going?” Wilbur repeats softly.

"Far, far away, Wilbur,” Phil says. “To see the world and go far, far away.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: Note that this is set in a universe that, while it has Minecraft elements like the End and Nether dimensions and some items from Minecraft, doesn't operate on its logic (ie no respawns, no carrying ridiculous amounts of items in an inventory, no weird health regeneration rules, no weird gravity, ect). Think of it as sort of a fantasy world, which includes animals, plants, and just generally stuff outside Minecraft.
> 
> I am a sucker for three things: Found family being family, running away to live on a farm, and GETTING SOME GODDAMN THERAPY. So these things will happen here, though the farm part will take another chapter or two to get going.
> 
> Also, I’m more used to writing in past tense so if you see any grammatical mistakes at all feel free to let me know and I will fix it! Aside from that, comments and constructive criticism are always welcome (I dearly hope I haven't made a huge mistake by starting another longfic).


	2. I heard there was a special place

The mountain winds are cold. Harsh. Biting. Snowdrifts cling to their boots more tightly than a zombie to the living, and any animals or forageable food are few and far between.

Phil is used to living alone amidst landscapes of duel beauty and danger, as breathtaking as they are precariously perilous - he thrives in such environments. 

His sons can too. They have the skills, the power, the perseverance. 

But he is not about to make things any harder than they have to be.

“Hey Phil! How long until we’re out of this hellhole?” Tommy wheezes slightly, and with a frown Phil pulls him closer. He scans the rocky landscape they’ve landed on, and hones in on a dark, shadowy spot nearby,

“A few more days, hopefully, as long as the winds are favorable,” Phil says. With his own large, feathery wings and knowledge of air currents, he could have easily made it through the massive mountain range in a week. Elytras are far less durable and far less easy to maneuver. 

Once again, he thanks his past self for the massive quantities of rockets stored in his ender chest. And those 4 days in the birch forest had been spent gathering food and other supplies, utilizing the addition of Techno and Wilbur’s spaces as well.

“I hate this place,” Tommy declares as they boil a few squirrels and rabbits for dinner. His voice echoes off the cave they’d taken shelter in. “It’s so fucking cold and wet and annoying.”

“Thank you for the very valuable information,” Techno says.

“Oh, you’re one to talk-”

“ _Boys_ ,” Phil says, and to his surprise they both fall quiet. Tommy even mumbles a “sorry” under his breath.

Years ago when they were all under his care just like now, Phil would have given just about anything to make them automatically stop bickering. Now, it seems they did with just a few words from him. 

It’s strange. Unsettling, even. 

Especially as Wilbur remains silent through all their exchanges.

It makes Phil’s heart ache.

~*~

Tommy hates the mountains, and he hates leaving behind a Tubbo that refused to come with him, and he hates everything that happened during his last few days in Dream’s lands.

He hates the fires that rage behind his eyes as he sleep and occasionally in his waking hours, he hates the thundering ring of explosions that refuses to leave his ears, thrashing scars wide open across the land in his mind, he hates the shrieking whistles of fireworks as he’s forced to open them in the air, or fall to his death.

He hates Eret for being the first betrayal and who began Wilbur’s spiral into distrust and madness, he hates Schlatt for taking away everything they had worked so hard to built and dangling it over their hunted heads, he hates Dream for encouraging and guiding and pushing Wilbur deeper and deeper into darkness for his own plans of chaos and power, wielding his position like a puppeteer with infinite strings.

But no matter how hard he tries, how much he wants to, how desperately he wishes it was true, Tommy can’t hate Wilbur. And he can’t hate Techno. And he can’t hate Phil, even when he arrived too late to save them. They’re his family. They had been there for him when no one else had, all the way back when he was just a starving orphan on seedy city streets, lucky enough to catch Phil’s attention.

It’s widely said that Tommy is too clingy, is too naive, can’t let go of things-

He hates how true the statement is.

~*~

A few more days and not bitchy winds later, the edge of the mountain range was in sight.

“Finally,” Tommy grumbles. He follows Phil’s lead and swoops down through the canopy of a dark evergreen forest that crawls slowly up the final mountain’s side. The familiar tang of tree bark and crunched pine needles swamp him almost immediately as the world plunges into shaded whispering, leaves rattling and ground soft with mulch and moss. 

“Are we living here or what?” Tommy asks as Techno and Wilbur land nearby. “Better than the mountains.”

“No,” Phil says. “Just resting for a while. We need to save up strength and supplies.”

“Where are we going?” Wilbur says softly, and Tommy nearly jumps in surprise. He hasn’t heard Wilbur speak since that first dive off the cliff.

...which is very concerning. 

_Not your job to worry, Tommy_ , he reminds himself. _Leave Dadza to fuss over him. You shouldn’t care._

“That’s a good point. Where _are_ we going?” Techno asks. “I’m down for traveling forever, but some of us don’t have the patience for that.”

Tommy expects that familiar spark of annoyance, the urge to challenge back - but it never comes. He merely continues to stare silently at Phil, awaiting response.

He wonders when this dullness within him began, and wonders why he can’t bring himself to care about it more.

But it’s fine. He still cares about other things, feels things. Nothing is particularly wrong. Tommy reassures himself with this matra, and turns his attention back onto Phil.

“I was thinking… across the ocean,” Phil says.

“Across the ocean?” Tommy asks, and suddenly he couldn’t keep the wideness from his eyes. 

“It would be a first for you, huh?” Phil chuckles. “The west one, obviously. I’ve taken Wilbur across once when he was really young. Met Techno there, actually.”

“But it’s - it’s so big.” Tommy struggles to keep the incredulousness out of his voice. “I don’t remember anyone who’s been there and back besides you three.”

“Oh, I know a few groups who have,” Phil says. “It’s not too difficult if you’re prepared and know the best path, which I doubt…”

He pauses, eyes darkening. Tommy thinks he sees a flash of raw, primal anger in his eyes before Phil returns to his usual bright self. It scares him. 

It also makes him feel safe. 

“Which I doubt Dream does,” Phil continues. “Ideally, we want to be as far away from him and the rest of his people as possible.”

Tommy won’t put it past Dream to put out wanted posters of them in his kingdom, that’s for sure. 

Away. Far, far away from everything.

It sounds so… appealing, despite who he has to leave behind.

“And then?” Techno prompts.

“And then we find a place to settle,” Phil says. “You guys will have to help me decide, of course.”

He holds out a hand, and Wilbur wordlessly begins to unclasp his elytra. A few moments later, Tommy and Techno follow his example.

Phil nods, accepts the elytras, and places down his ender chest. A few minutes later, tools in hand, they were preparing for the night.

~*~

Techno stalks his prey with focus, and with strategy. With a quick slash, the deer is dead before it hits the ground.

Meat for the next few days, which is probably how long Phil will make them stay here - though Techno doesn’t particularly care, either way. 

Sometimes, when those rare few that aren't absolutely terrified of his presence find the motivation to talk to him, they will ask what Techno cares about. What he lives for, why he does the things he does.

And he will respond that he is the Blood God, and he needs nothing to care for but violence. It is true.

He never answers the question itself.

With heave, Techno swings the carcass over his shoulder and heads back for the shelter Phil and Wilbur are building. He eyes the surrounding trees as he walks, ears twitching faintly.

Hopefully, Tommy knows his way around forageables well enough to not poison them all. They have meat and vegetables stored in their packs and ender chests, but those were dried and prepared for long journeys, to be used only when no other options are available. The ender chests are cold, but not cold enough to prevent spoilage.

The shelter is being built faster than Techno expects, Wilbur lashing and nailing and binding the wood and branches with a methodical ease while Phil does various tasks around him. 

They had all agreed to make it a treehouse high above the earthy floor, well out of reach of most monsters that stalk the night. They certainly all have the experience for it.

Phil taught them well. Techno feels a familiar, indescribable emotion as he watches his father and brother work.

He frowns.

“Got our meat,” he announces. Phil glances down.

“Cut it up a few paces away. No scavengers, remember?” he calls. A few moments later, a long slab of wood with a rope tied to the end tumbles onto the soft earth beside him. “Use this sled for transport.”

“Right,” Techno says. “Sled” is stretching it a bit, but it’ll get the job done.

He tosses the deer onto it and drags it for a few minutes to a nearby stream, waters rippling softly. The few beams of sunlight that manage to penetrate the forest roof dance like golden bees across its surface, and Techno can make out the shapes of various fish and crustaceans darting around.

Quickly, he begins butchering. Slice the belly, remove the organs, remove the head, peel the skin, carve the meat into manageable slices. Throw away what isn’t edible, save some bones for broth.

Eventually, he has several large chunks of meat, a pile of fur and tendons, a stack of bones, four hooves, and a deer head. He debates whether or not to keep the head for a few moments before sighing and tossing it into the stream.

Techno is about to head back when a flash of silver scales catches his eyes. A school of fish are congregating in the waters, swimming in a frenzy beneath the floating pile of deer organs that Techno had left behind.

He quietly stalks over, careful to keep his shadow away from the stream's surface. Unslings the trident from his back. Aims carefully. 

Strikes.

Wilbur loves the taste of fish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can’t promise the next chapter to come as fast since school is starting again and they’re not online because the administration is corrupt as hell, but I’ll try to keep update schedules somewhat decent. And chapters will hopefully get longer eventually as well.


	3. though our sunniest days were now stolen away

Wilbur stares at the three fish Techno throws down before him like he has been offered a plate of orphans instead. 

Techno shuffles awkwardly, taking a step closer to Phil.

And Phil sighs, kneeling down to shake Wilbur's shoulder.

"Alright?" he asks, a double meaning question. 

Wilbur slowly blinks.

"As much as I can be," he says. His voice is scratchy and hoarse. Phil bits his lip, but chooses to place his waterskin beside him and let the matter go.

He drags the fish over to the temporary cooking area they had set up, and nods to Techno. 

Perhaps starting a fire and cooking with it in the tree house they’re planning to sleep in isn’t the greatest idea, but they are pressed for time and options. Besides, he trusts his experience enough to not screw this up.

He and Wilbur had reinforced the space rather well in the few hours, if Phil does say so himself. It’s wedged high between 6 towering pine trees that had grown in a rough circle, the branches overlapping enough that with some well-nailed planks it can hold all their weight, supplies, and much more without worries of stability. More planks and branches had then been overlaid along the gaps between the trees to block out most of the wind, and above them in a slanted position to run off any rain. 

Phil had also gathered several large, flat stones and many smaller ones, making a campfire in the corner that he is reasonably sure will not set the forest alight. It’s a gamble he is willing to take, with how cold the nights will get and how hated fire is by the monsters that roam the land.

“Techno,” he says. “Start butchering. Some meat and fish for all of us - I’m going to find Tommy.”

He isn’t worried, per se, about where his youngest has gone. There is still an hour or so left until the night's darkness truly comes, and he has instructions to stay near the stream to prevent getting lost.

The gods know how much Tommy enjoys pushing his luck, however.

(Though maybe that's not the case anymore. Who's to say how much any of his children have changed? Certainly not Philza, with his failure to be there for them when they needed him the most.)

But. Just in case. He has been told to not stray too far, after all. 

Phil stretches out his wings, and flies.

~*~

The forest is beautiful, he thinks as he calls Tommy’s name. The sharp freshness of pine needles is more distinct in the sea of branches that he weaves through with practiced ease. Birds of various colors flutter amongst the them, calling to each other in whistling songs of the coming night. 

The denseness of the trees stretch on in every direction, eventually ending in curtains of foggy shadows. The floor below races by in greens and browns and mottled reds, twisting mushrooms and curling ferns.

Phil takes some moments to appreciate the dappled sunlight that falls in scattered stripes and spots across the forest. It reminds him why he choses to settle and live in the places he does.

Suddenly, a familiar fluff of blond hair catches his eyes, and Phil twists downwards.

“Tommy,” he says as he lands next to him. Tommy turns and blinks, shaded beneath a particularly tall pine. Two basketfuls of mushrooms and wild greens are on a bed of moss beside him.

The husk of a small bee is in his hands, his fingers rolling it softly back and forth.

“Tommy,” Phil says gently, and Tommy lets go. The bee drops onto the soft earth without a sound. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. He picks up the baskets.

Phil doesn’t say anything. What he knows are only vague recollections and offhand remarks that have already gone through the grind wheels of assumption. 

_ You have no right to take them away, let alone talk of such things, _ a voice whispers in his mind. 

Tommy is still looking at him, and so, Phil resolves to push such doubts away for now. 

Silently, he guides Tommy back to their tree house.

~*~

They eat their meal, a soup of venison and fish and the forage Tommy had picked. Cooking had gone smoother than expected.

Techno watches as Wilbur bite and swallow pieces of fish without question, and feels a strange sense of relief.

When he is done with his own dinner, he places his bowl in their corner designated for such and takes out a bundle of crossbow bolts from the ender chest Phil had set down. The crossbow itself is already next to him, and his trident sheathed firmly on his back. 

“I’m taking the first watch,” he announces, and no one disagrees with him.

~*~

The night is silent, save for the occasional rattling of bones in the darkness, or the piercing screeches of what Techno can only assume is some unlucky animal meeting its end at the merciless jaws of one predator or another. 

Their walls are fitted well, tightly, and he feels drafts only from the small round window and tiny peepholes Phil has carved out. 

Occasionally, he breaks the monotony himself by turning to observe his sleeping family for a few moments, bunched tightly together amidst fur and woolen blankets. Tommy and Wilbur both thrash erratically, each mumbling pleas for their own kinds of horrors, and Phil seems to have some subconscious instinct to pull them closer during these episodes.

Techno himself often feels the need to sleep, but rarely does he give into those feelings, and never does he allow them to bother him. The realm of sleep seldom wishes to claim him, anyway. 

Sometimes, he wonders if there is something broken in the way he pushes through that yawning fog and grips unyieldingly onto the waking world. If he has shattered the connection beyond repair and this is a punishment in its own right. It is fitting, yet another consequence of his hubris.

The gods know he already has so many.

He contemplates the whole idea as Tommy breaks into a quiet sob, grasping helplessly in the shadow of nightmares, and Phil rolls closer to him.

Throughout the watch, he hears only one hissing scratch close to the tree house. He angles his ears, aims into the darkness below with his crossbow, and shoots.

The faint crunch of bolt smashing into exoskeleton is heard. After that, silence.

About 3 hours since he began watching, when the fire has died down to crackling embers, Techno wakes Phil up. He unslings his trident and gives it to him, nodding at the crossbow and bolts still lying beneath the window. 

An agreement passes between them as they glance at each other, and then at Tommy and Wilbur shuddering in the empty space Phil left behind.

Techno walks over and lies down in that space, draws the blankets over his shoulders, and closes his eyes. He feels Tommy pressing closer, and tries his best to stay still.

He does not fall asleep.

~*~

Some time later, Phil nudges him. Techno carefully stands up, steps over to the window, and watches Phil dig himself beneath the blankets. The fire is burning brightly.

He does not wake Phil up again for the rest of the night.

(They keep this arrangement for the rest of the time they are there. Neither Tommy or Wilbur mention it.)

~*~

For the next few days, they prepare. 

Techno hunts some more, deer and rabbits and the occasional goose falling before his sword and bolts. An odd raven here or there, for the glossy feathers and sharp beaks, or a tender pheasant when he gets lucky.

The forest is full of foxes as well, darting among the bushes and ferns and patches of tall grass. After a few moments of deliberation when he had first spotted one creeping about, Techno commits to scaring all of them away from the tree house the best he can.

He skins his catches by the stream, dragging back all the meat and fur and feathers.

He makes sure to spear a fish as well.

Phil is arguably the busiest of them all. He sets aside portions for their next meals and smokes the rest of the meats dry. He tans the furs the best he can, storing the other useful parts, while Wilbur helps under his direction. A pile of bolts and arrows also begin to pile within Techno's ender chest space.

They can’t grow things in the time they have, but Phil is adamant about fiber in their diet and sends Tommy out to collect anything edible he comes across. After the first 3 days, when they have more meat than they can store and too much fur and feathers to have more use, it's decided that Techno will join him. 

Tommy stares at him with a mixture of emotions when Phil announces the plan, very few of which Techno has the ability to understand. Among what he  _ can _ pick out, however, are the flecks of resentment in his younger brother's eyes, and the hard, drawn line of apprehension in the way he presses his lips.

If any trace of that former adoration Tommy once held for him is left, Techno can not detect it.

Another strange feeling curves, bending impossible shapes within him. Techno doesn't know how to address it, so he defaults to his usual solution of ignoring such feelings. It's a solution that has worked so far.

He slings a pair of baskets over his shoulders.

"Let's go," he says, and watches as Tommy nods stiffly.

They don't talk while gathering forage. Techno has grown used to other people starting conversations for him, painfully aware of his inability to do so.

Tommy’s responding silence, however, is almost jarring. 

Almost. Techno refuses to allow anything to truly surprise him.

~*~

On the 7th day, when a week has gone by and the space in all their ender chests are packed as full as possible, Phil closes it for the final time in the forest. He turns the lock that shrinks it down to the size of an apple and slides it deep into his bag.

Dawn is approaching rapidly, alighting the forest in a soft, warming light. It burns against Techno’s eyes as he pries open the door, glances outside, and signals that they’re clear.

A few moments later, four dark shapes are gliding beneath the clouds, high above a sea of pointed pine green swaying with the mountain winds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say I really like writing nature scenery. 
> 
> Alright, another short chapter! The next one will be longer, I promise. It will also take longer, definitely. Lol.
> 
> Comments and feedback are always appreciated, though of course no pressure. Thanks for reading!


	4. make you cry, say goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that this is set in a universe that, while it has Minecraft elements like the End and Nether dimensions and some items from Minecraft, doesn't operate on its logic (ie no respawns, no carrying ridiculous amounts of items in an inventory, no weird health regeneration rules, no weird gravity, ect). Think of it as sort of a fantasy world, which includes animals, plants, and just generally stuff outside Minecraft. Should probably have stated that earlier.

The ocean is endless, and deep, and filled with more shades of blue than Tommy could have ever imagined. He wonders how Phil remembers where to go, how he can point to a direction and say "that way" with such confidence. 

Hypocritical, coming from him. But that is the way things are, and Tommy wants to know.

_ He ignores the ache in his chest that flares as he thinks so. _

Flying is silent, save for the occasional rocket when the air currents let up, and Phil's steady wingbeats. Any attempts at conversation are thrown and stretched by the streaming wind, voices intangible to the ears of others.

Tommy hates it. He also refuses to let it bother him. 

When the sun is just barely dipping the horizon, a wall of cliffs comes into sight. Islands of green and gray have passed below them before, but none as massive as this.

Phil makes a motion and veers to the left. Tommy narrows his eyes, angles his elytra (which he has gotten quite good at, if he does say so himself), and follows.

The cliffs slope down into gentle hills as they circle around the island, and eventually flattens into stone beaches, a plain of flat, weathered gray. There's buildings there - lots of them, Tommy realizes, built from strange combinations of stone, brick, and wood. One looms above the others, built in the center with a giant bell tower that protrudes from the top.

It's a town. Not big enough for a city, but a town of considerable size nonetheless. There are people hurrying through the cobbled streets, tinier than ants from the sky view above. Nearing the shore, ships of all sizes are woven among docks and piers that run out into the ocean, and seabirds swarm the area with a raucous cawing.

Phil points to one of those piers, bustling with people and stalls. He angles his wings, and they continue to follow.

Tommy eyes Wilbur as they descend. 

He's followed all of Phil's directions so far with an emotionless stare, like a soldier that has forgotten his reasons for fighting, but who continues nonetheless in a mindless directive. 

It creeps Tommy out. Wilbur has always been the most creative, most  _ emotional _ of them all. He feels and thinks and creates with a depth few can match, throws himself deep into visions of ideals with an unlimited passion. It is his greatest strength, and as L'Manberg has proved, his greatest weakness.

The husk Tommy sees holds none of that, and he isn't sure whether he's any better than the version of Wilbur he dealt with before, laughing with maniacal craze amidst Manberg's blown up rubble, begging his own father to end his life. There's a dullness to the eyes that once held the world's fire flaring within them.

Tommy blinks, and realizes there's stained wooden planks rushing up to meet him.

"Careful," Phil says as he steadies his landing with guiding hands.

"Where is this?" he manages to ask. "Who the hell sets up a town on a random island in the middle of fucking nowhere?"

He gets a few dirty looks from passersbys, in addition to Phil's reprimanding look.

"Try to keep it down, okay?" Techno says flatly. "We need supplies and rest, and we look weird enough already."

Something twists inside Tommy, not quite guilt and not quite indignance. 

"Fine," he mumbles, and resolves to stay silent.

~*~

Phil has packed, among many things, copious amounts of money. Cut emeralds and gold coins will usually net something in any country or city-state or independent village, but they have plenty of things to trade even if the residents don't accept that form of currency.

Which they do, he reminds himself.

"Techno," Phil says. He takes out a pouch of coins and emeralds from his bag and holds it out. "Anything you think will be useful, get it. I trust you'll use your best judgement."

Techno nods, taking the pouch and sliding it into an inner pocket of his long coat. 

They would have to wash those coats soon, Phil thinks. There is dried blood on both his and Techno's still.

He is thankful, however, that the blood crimson cloak is stored away in his ender chest. 

"Where are you going?"

"To find a place for the night," Phil says. "Stay around here, and I'll come get you soon."

He places a hand on Wilbur's shoulder, gives Tommy a nod, and steers them towards the town proper. 

~*~

They receive some strange looks, mainly directed at Phil's wings, jet black with spots of white near the bottom in a color pallet which matches his coat - but the town is one founded on trading routes, and so has learned to not ask too many questions about strange creatures when they bring with them money. 

A few residents even seem to remember him, signaling so with a quick nod or wave. Phil waves back to them as he tries to recall the route to the inn he has stayed at the past few times he made a cross ocean journey. 

They reach it eventually, a large establishment bustling with activity. A sign spelling  _ Pause and Unpause _ in cheery red paint hangs above the mahogany doors. Phil opens it just as a woman also does so, and they both hastily step back.

"Sorry, go ahead," she says, guestering. "The routes here are long, so you must be tired."

“Thank you,” Phil says as he pushes Tommy and Wilbur through. “It wasn’t too bad for us. I hope your ship made it alright.”

“That obvious, huh?” she chuckles. She takes off her dark blue cap, pressing it against her vest. “What gave it away?”

“You reek of salt and fish,” Phil admits. 

“That I do,” she laughs. “Crew just stoppin’ here for some supplies and good food. Long fishing trip. We were plannin’ to swing by the Dream Kingdom waters for a bit, but those plans ‘ave been stoppered. Probably not wise to go there right now, ‘case you were thinkin’ of headin’ there.”

“Oh, thanks-”

“Why?” Tommy asks, poking his head back out. Phil takes a deep breath, but doesn’t stop his inquiry.

“Somethin’ somethin’ about a new king and war and a place being blown up,” she shrugs. “Not sure on the details, but what we do know's that the political situation’s hotter than a whale’s tongue. The Dream’s orderin’ random searches of vessels in his waters. Very paranoid, that Dream is. Miss the previous one.”

“I see,” Phil says carefully.

“What about - about the new nation?” Tommy asks. “Manberg.”

"That was the war?” the ship captain frowns. “They got a new leader now, President… Toby or somethin’. That place runs through leaders like I run through our whiskey supply. The perils of new nations, I suppose. Always so unstable. Apparently the Dream’s not happy with it - havin’ territory disputes already. Like I said, best avoid the situation for now.”

“The victims of war are always those most undeserving of it,” Phil agrees, watching Tommy open his mouth again.

“Excuse me, can you two stop blocking the doorway?” 

Phil steps back and apologizes as two men shoulder their way past them.

“Well, I wish you safe travels,” he says to the captain when they're gone.

“And you too.” She tips her cap, and strolls off to disappear into the street of bustling people, all hasenting their activities with the arriving twilight.

“Tommy,” Phil says as he guides him and Wilbur inside the inn. The smell of chicken soup and rosewood hits him immediately. 

“But I need to-”

“Tommy, listen to me,” Phil says softly. He leans down. “You make the decision you think is best, and I won’t stop you. All I ask is that you take tonight to consider things and tell us. And - please think your plans through.”

Tommy flinchess, and looks up.

His eyes are locked with some sort of determination. Towards what, Phil doesn’t know.

“I…”

“Tommy,” Wilbur whispers. Tommy stiffens. Phil leans forward and places a hand on both their shoulders.

Wilbur blinks, and for the first time since he carried him away from the ruins of Manberg, Phil sees a spark of intention in his eyes. “Tommy, please. Think about this.”

“We can help you plan,” Phil adds. He takes a deep breath, trying to still the painful feeling inside him, like his heart and lungs are being squeezed to bursting.

Tommy is silent for a long moment, glancing between him and Wilbur. A litany of expressions flash across his face - desperation, fear, anger - all of which lead back to uncertainty.

Phil keeps quiet as Tommy paces a few steps. His youngest has grown, and he has matured. He has to let him make his own decisions now, against the ache that's growing inside him.

“...alright,” Tommy finally says. “Alright.”

Phil manages a weak smile. Next to him, Wilbur shifts quietly.

~*~

Techno feels the pouch of money press cooly against his ribs through thin linen as he glances around the pier. The ocean winds batter his hair back and forth and everything smells of salt and seaweed. It’s familiar, yet new - he hasn’t been around coastal communities in a while, and each one always seems to have their own unique flair. 

Beyond the crashing of waves against the shores and ships, and the squacks of seabirds scavenging, the call of various vendors ring louder than any conversation. Techno takes a deep breath as he considers his options.

“Fried lamb chops, delicious and filling!” 

“Fresh fish! All regional species in stock!”

“Exotic plants from all over! Nightmare darkflowers! Jardonian mourning vines! Azalea saplings!” 

He briefly considers the benefits of a flower farm before sighing. It’s probably not the most… useful hobby, to entertain right now. There’s a nearby stall with various blades laid out on a purple cloth, and Techno begins to make his way towards it.

“Moobloom bulbs!” 

He freezes.

_ Moobloom bulbs. _

His feet turn.

The vendor flinches as Techno stares at him.

“How in the world did you get here so fast?”

“How much?” Techno asks, ignoring the question. “For the moobloom bulbs.”

The vendor perks up immediately. “2 gold pieces per bulb! Standard size.”

“Expensive,” Techno notes.

“Well, they’re very rare,” the vendor says. “And it takes a lot to keep em’ in prime condition, you know. These just got shipped here too!’

Phil would want him to barter, to lower prices, but Techno is already feeling that familiar tingle of dread crawl down his spine again. He takes out the pouch and pulls out a large, shiny emerald. 

“How many can I get for this?” he asks. The vendor’s eyes widen, and he leans over to examine the gem.

“It's not often people buy with these around here,” he whispers. “So clearly cut too… 10 bulbs for that.”

“Deal,” Techno says. He slides the emerald over. It’s immediately snatched up, and after a bit of rummaging 10 moobloom bulbs, yellowed with faint streaks of pink, are placed on the table in front of him. 

“A wrapping too,” Techno says as he examines them. “And a replacement for this one. It’s dead.”

He's met with a grumble, but a few moments later he has 10 moobloom bulbs bundled in crinkly white paper. 

15 minutes later, Techno also has several new knives of various shapes and sizes, 3 pairs of woolen socks and gloves, the giant text that is  _ Flora of Novixl  _ by The Novixl Guild of Scientists, and a glossy leather satchel to store it all. It's of a similar style to Phil's, a messenger bag Techno slings to his side as he eyes the small market for any final items.

He's about to leave when a seagull flutters in front of him, and he remembers.

_ Writing. _

They have feathers (so many feathers), but they lack ink. It isn't particularly hard to make themselves, but good ink takes time and resources.

After some awkward inquiries, he learns there's a small shop selling various writing paraphernalia a little ways from the pier.

"Hello, traveler," is the greeting when Techno opens the door. He blinks, and steps over to the counter.

"I just need writing ink," he says. "Squid or carbon."

His eyes trail to a collection of leather bound books behind the shopkeeper.

Not books, he realizes as he takes in the patterns of flowers and clouds and wavy splashes of color. Journals.

"I bind them myself," the shopkeeper says, grinning as she follows his gaze. She waves an arm, the stains of black marring her hands clearly visible. "40 years of experience. These are some fine journals, if I do say so myself."

Techno glances down at his bag, and thinks of the flower bulbs packed inside. He thinks of ripped songs and scribbled notes and crossed out declarations written with an elegant sweep across crunched, burned pages.

"I'll take two as well," he says. "The yellow one, and that flower one."

The shopkeeper smiles.

"You can tell a lot about a person not just by what they write, but also what they write with," she says as she gathers his purchases. Techno remains silent as he pulls out a handful of gold coins.

"Whoever this one is for, I hope it brings them solace."

Techno dumps the coins onto the counter, takes the ink jars and journals, and stiffly turns around. 

There's a reason he hates social interaction.

~*~

Phil doesn't question anything as Techno shows him the purchases. He merely nods, smiles, and guides him back to the inn.

~*~

"Large room for four," Phil tells the innkeeper. "Good evening, Vixella."

"Been a while," she agrees. "And who might they be?"

She nods at Wilbur, Techno, and Tommy, all three of which were standing behind him with various degrees of awkwardness. 

Phil hesitates for a moment before replying. "My sons."

"You have children? How did I never know?" Vixella writes something down in a notebook. "You know, they somehow manage to both look like you and not like you at the same time. Room 9, by the way. Near the back hallway."

"Just never came up, I suppose," Phil says. "Thanks."

"No problem," she says. "Have a nice night!"

~*~

Tommy can't sleep. 

It shouldn't be all that surprising, really. But still.

He thinks back to the day he decided to leave with Phil. When he was stuffing various items in his backpack, and then running as fast as he could, directions already memorized from the hours he had spent staring at the notes with an agonized, burning feeling.

When he was asking Tubbo, again and again, to come with him.

_ "Phil will accept you, he can keep us safe!" _

_ "With Techno and Wilbur?" _

_ "They - they didn't used to be like this. They won't be anymore. Not without all this power nonsense." _

He believes it. He doesn’t know if he can forgive it. The idea makes him seize, lungs collapsing.

_ "Power nonsense… I'm sorry this has taken so much from you, Tommy. But L'Manberg needs me. They need a leader that won't bail or corrupt everything, a leader that actually means to help. If I suddenly leave, the nation will completely crumble." _

_ "Get someone else-" _

_ "There is no one else, Tommy. No one the citizens will put their trust in, and they've already had their trust broken so much. I can't do that to them too." _

_ "Don't you want to be safe? And free?" _

_ "I do, Tommy. But I can't just think of myself…" _

_ "...I didn't mean it like that! Sorry, Tommy, I just - I think you should go. Phil needs you more than L'Manberg does. You should… go with them." _

_ "You don't want me to help with rebuilding?" _

_ "I think they need you more than I do." _

Do they? What did Tommy give, really? Shouldn't he be in L'Manberg, supporting Tubbo's presidency?

Dream is pushing things again. Tommy isn't surprised, not with his past record, though he wonders who he decided to replace Eret with. The Dream Kingdom's mysterious puppeteer rulers have always had an infamous power addiction, though Dream - this one - apparently does things much more strategically than his predecessors.

_ "I think they need you more than I do." _

He tries not to scream, forcing his throat silent in the absolute darkness.

_ "Think plans through." _

He takes a deep breath, muffled by the blanket covering him.

He can do that. Contrary to popular belief, he can do that. He'll prove it.

What can he bring to Tubbo? To L'Manberg?

Battle skills. That has always been his biggest strength - he isn't Techno, but he has trained under both him and Phil. He's one of the best fighters in the world, and he knows that isn't an exaggeration.

He can fight for Tubbo. Whatever war will happen, he will-

Tommy stiffens in his bed. 

He'll what? Charge at Dream's massive army alone? With a ragtag group of weary soldiers tired of war and destruction and who would rather defect back to the Dream Kingdom than stay any longer in a nation built and torn and rebuilt by war? 

Tubbo will avoid war. He isn't Schlatt with careless disregard, isn't Wilbur with burning, fiery ideals of freedom at all costs. Tubbo's goal has always been the wellbeing of those he cares about, and now that extends to all of L'Manberg.

Which means no war. If it comes to it, Tubbo would rather surrender than doom them all to death.

_ "Those who would give up liberty for safety deserve neither."  _ Techno had uttered those words as the revolution streamed into Manberg lands, eager to topple Schlatt's government once and for all. They had agreed, all of them, including Tubbo.

Turns out, everyone has vastly different ideas of what "liberty" and "safety" mean. To Tubbo, liberty included having a life.

Included the people of his nation having a life. 

What can Tommy bring to that? Dream already holds enough disdain for him.

What can - what can Tommy bring to Phil, Wilbur, or Techno?

_ “Gosh, Tommy. Stop being so clingy to everything!” _

A feeling akin dread frosts in his stomach, but sharper and icier - more unforgiving. Visions flash around his mind - explosions and hatred and betrayal and distant sobbing. 

He suddenly feels like throwing up. 

He remembers, now, why he doesn't like thinking things through.

Tommy closes his eyes, grips his blankets, and tries to sleep.

~*~

When Phil wakes he sees Tommy asleep in his bed, and he is indescribably relieved.

"Still here?" Techno asks, obviously thinking the same thing. He's writing something on a table, in one of the new journals he had bought. Phil wonders if he got any sleep at all.

Another failure on his part. But he can't push it right now.

"We don't give him enough credit," Phil says. 

"No, you bitches don't," Tommy grumbles from under the covers.

Phil smiles, and reaches over from his own bed to tousle his hair. "Good morning."

Tommy sits up slowly, rubbing at his eyes. There's traces of shadows beneath them, Phil notes with a slowly sinking feeling. 

"I'm-" he pauses, and glances at Wilbur. 

Phil follows his gaze to his eldest, unusually calm as he lay motionless on the fourth bed. There’s faint breathing, the occasional spasm, but a strange lack of presence. Like a ghost occupies the space, and has for a while.

Hesitantly, he reaches over and nudges Wilbur’s shoulder. 

When they're all fully awake, Tommy takes a deep breath and begins.

"I'm staying with you guys.”

Phil’s first reaction is a nod. He blinks, catching himself.

He should be happy, but an uncomfortable, scratching feeling circles inside of him. Tommy seems so… resigned.  _ Defeated. _

It feels so wrong.

He looks at Tommy’s tired eyes, and leans forward.

“Are you - are you sure this is what you want?” he asks, ignoring the dread that pools in his stomach. “I know you and Tubbo are close. I don’t want you to feel pressured-”

“I’m sure,” Tommy says quietly. “Tubbo’s president now. He can’t - we can’t put each other above everything else anymore and it's not fair to make him choose. I don’t want to give him more things to worry about.”

_ It’s so uncharacteristic, _ is what Phil thinks.  _ But I don’t really know him anymore, do I? _

He exhales quietly. Something inside him settles, and he wonders if he should feel guilt for presenting the option in the first place. For, despite everything, the silent flare of rejoice at the idea that all his sons will stay with him.

“I have something to give you,” Techno suddenly says. He reaches into his new satchel and carefully pulls out a wide, flat box. 

Tommy takes it, and opens the covers. 

Despite not being either the giver or receiver, Phil feels another twinge of anxiety.

“Moobloom bulbs,” Techno says. “For when we… you know. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad timing that I bought them when I did, but...”

Tommy swallows, and nods. 

“I - I like it,” he says like it pains him. “The flowers. And growing them. Maybe we can have a bee farm.”

“That could be arranged,” Phil agrees. He glances out the window, morning sun barely halfway above the horizon. “Shall we get breakfast, then?”

“One more thing,” Techno says. He reaches into his bag again, and pulls out a pale yellow notebook. There’s faint white clouds billowing across it, a pastel of peaceful colors. “Wil, you left your - your journal in Pogtopia. It was too ruined to read or write in, so I figured you might want a new one.”

Wilbur stares blankly at the journal Techno offers him. And continues staring.

And staring. 

The pain inside him is back full force again. Phil wonders if he should reach out, intervene,  _ do something they’re  _ your _ sons- _

“Wil,” Techno says, shoving it closer. A rare note of desperation leaks into his voice. 

Slowly, Wilbur reaches out and takes the journal. 

“We have lots of quills, and I got ink too,” Techno mumbles as Wilbur brushes a hand over the cover. 

“Thanks,” he whispers back, so softly Phil could barely hear him. Techno’s shoulders relax the tiniest bit.

“Right! I’m getting breakfast first, losers. Bye.” And with that, Techno is gone and the door is swinging open.

Phil tries not to look too relieved as he ushers Tommy and Wilbur out after him. But a warm feeling curls around in his chest for the rest of the morning.

~*~

Summer is ending fast. Phil hopes they can reach the coast within a month, giving them time to prepare for winter. Novixl’s winters, especially in the upper part of the continent, are harsh and fierce. They all understand the urgency.

A few hours later, they’re in the air again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's past my bedtime and I've only proofread this once rip. (As always comments are appreciated, though no pressure!)
> 
> And what can I say, I really like worldbuilding (I hope the made up names aren’t too intrusive, but places and things and people gotta be called something and I tried my best to give them a Minecrafty vibe while also being a plausible name in this universe.)
> 
> Every time I plan for something to take up a chapter it balloons into 3 chapters. What is this sorcery. 
> 
> Rest assured that though it may be a while, we have not heard the last of Tubbo and Dream either. (I quite like the lore I came up with around Dream and his land to try and fit canon elements into a non-Minecraft universe. The whole “king” thing while he’s clearly in power and the name of the land is in his name - the start of the worldbuilding and explanation around that is introduced here.)


	5. the minor fall, the major lift

Techno vaguely recalls each city or town they cross and stop at for the night, each distinct from the last in their own unique ways. They fall into a pattern quickly - fly, reach an island as night envelops the world in its silent embrace, sleep to dawn, and continue flying. 

There are islands in between, usually dots of nothing but barren rock and seabirds, or occasionally overgrown with unfamiliar vegetation and hidden wildlife. They stop to eat and rest when they can, though Techno echoes Phil's sentiment of reaching the continent as quickly as possible. Preparedness is everything, and not just in war.

The feeling of wind slicing against his face _did_ get old after a few days, however, and after two weeks Techno is very, very bored. Elytras can't mimic the complex movements Phil twirls in the air with his feathery wings, though he has challenged himself to come as close as possible.

When they stop at any settlement, Techno feels a familiar twinge of… something. Unease, some might say, though he refuses to allow himself to be unsettled. Anger, perhaps - but contrarily, Techno rarely feels true anger, and this he would say is not it. 

Whatever it is, the idea of government looms over him. Tommy hasn't forgiven him, he knows, and the moobloom bulbs were more of a reassurance than any true bridge builder. He isn't quite sure if he wants to pursue that route just yet anyway, as delicate and fraught with hidden land mines as it is.

Instead he continues observation of the people bustling around in the spots of civilization they come across. Each under the shadow of laws and expectations, bowing heads at the mercy of tyrants. 

He knows Tubbo means well, knows he means his best when he declares a new era for L'Manberg. But the game of politics is one which butchers the potential of heroes, grounds the ideals to a withering paste and blows it into the unforgiving winds of viciousness. 

If Tubbo wishes to keep power and make any semblance of difference, he will need to stray down that path of corruption sooner than later, before more ruthless opponents take advantage of that fragility. 

It's a game Techno has played himself, and one he does not care to play again.

 _"You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."_ The phrase is coined and applied and proven in the world of power. L'Manberg and the Dream Kingdom have provided more examples than Techno cares to count.

Tommy would have needed to go down that same path too, if he had stayed with Tubbo and given his support, or else be cast aside by a leader who cannot afford a single weak link for the sake of his country and his power.

A whirlwind of thoughts and feelings claw inside Techno at the entire idea, all of which bad but none of which he understands.

But Tommy is not in L'Manberg, treading that dangerous game of power and influence, the flimsy network of allies and enemies that can shift so unexpectedly with each passing second. He is here, with them, and so is Wilbur.

It's enough to settle his nerves somewhat as he walks down the streets that scream power in each settlement, bearing the marks of their true owners in flags and carvings and the deliberate ways they twist around each individual building - or don't.

Techno has traveled between continents before, and like last time a few places - or groups, linger in his mind more than others.

"I was hoping we wouldn't have to stop here for the night, but we don't have much of a choice," Phil says as he steadies Wilbur's landing. The sun has fully set, night dousing the world in near total darkness.

Techno glances around. The island they've landed on is big. Large enough for a full town, but creeping with jungle trees and a mass of twisting vines and bushes. A lone sandy strip of shore separates the dense thickets from the ocean. 

"Better than sleeping in the ocean." Tommy frowns. "Fuck mosquitoes, though."

"No, that's not it," Phil says, and Techno understands what he means now.

"Huh?"

"Too quiet," Techno says. "No sounds of animals or monsters. There's someone here. A few, probably."

"Right there are. What brings you four to our island?"

The voice comes from nowhere and everywhere, source indistinguishable even to him.

Phil places both hands up, and gives Techno a level stare. Techno sighs, and nods in compliance.

"We're just travelers looking for rest," Phil calls. "I promise we mean no harm, and will leave in the morning."

"We don't need your fucking permission to be here," Tommy snaps, and Phil shushes him with a frown.

"We don't! If the cowards are too scared to face us like normal-"

"Tommy, please don't make this harder for us," Techno says. "We're clearly outnumbered here. By a lot, probably."

"Oh, I'm the great Technoblade, I can pull so much information from my ass-"

"I apologize, we'll make sure he doesn't cause trouble," Phil hastily calls. 

There's a moment of silence, and then the swath of green before them shakes. A shape with long hair and a shimmering netherite sword steps out, individual features hidden by the darkness.

"Philza, wasn't it?" she asks. "And the infamous Technoblade."

"I see my reputation precedes me," Techno says dryly. 

"Right," Philza says. "I'm hoping to negotiate for actual housing for the night too?"

"8 diamonds," she says immediately. "Wait - 10, actually, since that one is so annoying. Unless you have something else you wish to trade?"

"Information," Phil says slowly. "About the Dream Kingdom and L'Manberg, among other things. From me."

There's faint muttering from the jungle, and the figure leans back and turns to the bushes. A moment later, she moves to face them again. 

"Follow me," she says.

Phil gives them all a nod, and follows.

~*~

For a minute they push and slash their way through twisting roots and vines and bushes in patterns so thick Tommy fills the silent night with curses of revenge. Techno is sure he hears a quiet giggling in response to a few of them. 

Then, a wide, trodden path opens up and they're met with little resistance from nature the rest of the way. The figure is silent the entire time.

Eventually, they're led to a small village of houses scattered across an open clearing. Each seems to lean more heavily into aesthetics than anything else, Techno thinks, wondering who has the time to carve little spirals and designs along the glass and metal of individual lanterns. 

One of the doors open, and someone pokes their head out. Techno sees a mop of blond hair and dark black eyes before he thinks _this is familiar-_

“Who are you?” the person asks. He blinks, and stares at Phil, whose wings seem to fluff up. Techno catches a glimpse of purple feathers behind the door.

“They’re staying the night and leaving in the morning,” their guide says to him. She moves to a house with darkened windows and opens the door. “There’s more than enough beds in here. But Philza needs to come with me first.”

“We don't need-" 

"Tommy," Phil says. "It's fine." 

Behind them, a click sounds, and then another one. 

_Interesting,_ Techno thinks.

~*~

The walls are bare, but well built, and all the furniture is in good condition. 

Wilbur’s steps are slow, methodical, echoing the fine grain of wood sanded down to plains. The eyes in the walls sand down him as he sits down on the bed Techno points at. 

They’re judging, he thinks. Or watching. Perhaps there is no difference. How does one observe without thinking of their observations in turn?

Tommy is saying something. Wilbur doesn’t know what. He rarely does, these days. It's easier to stay in the murk of uncertainty and allow all reality to fly over his head. Create no perch for them to land, a vast ocean of roiling waves.

His hand traces the shape of curved leather in a small bag he was given - or that he took. He doesn’t know which it is either, just that it holds… his things. Whatever nebulous definition of _his_ is, anyway. 

It’s fine, he tells himself, and not fine. But Wilbur can live in the contradictions. It’s almost as if he’s made of them.

~*~

“Who are these creepy people anyway?” Tommy grumbles as Phil slips through the door. 

“A… small community,” Phil says. He flops down on his bed and yawns. “I wish I knew more, but information on them is scarce. Got word they moved to this island during my trip to Dream’s place.”

“And information from you is valuable enough that they’re willing to let strangers live in their place?” Techno asks.

“Well, this probably isn’t one of their main bases,” Phil says. “Nowhere near as grandiose and elaborate. I’ve bartered with them a few times, so they know me enough to trust I won’t mess anything up. And yes, I’m actually a good supplier of information. Comes with traveling to so many places.”

“And what else did you get?” 

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” Phil chuckles. “These were impulse buys, but the chance was too good to pass up.”

He takes out his bag and pulls out 4 shimmering golden totems. 

“What are those?” Tommy asks. His eyes widen, and seem to reflect the wavy enchantments in the torchlight.

“How much did you pay for these?” Techno asks. “And what kind of ‘small community’ has enough of them they’re willing to sell away 4?”

“I paid 20 diamonds,” Phil shrugs. “And by their standards I got ripped off.”

“20 diamonds for _4_ totems of undying,” Techno repeats. There’s true amazement in his voice, much to Phil’s amusement. 

“What are they?” Tommy demands. 

“If you hold them and you suffer an injury that would otherwise kill you, it heals the injury and saves your life,” Phil explains. “One use, of course. They’re very, very rare and require a lot of fighting with certain monsters to get. I figured since we have to rest here anyway, I might as well take the chance to see if there’s anything good in stock.”

“And is there anything else you got?” Techno asks. “We only have so many diamonds, Phil.”

“ _You_ only have so many diamonds,” Phil corrects. “I have a lot more. But yes.”

Carefully, he pulled out a warm, shining nether star from his bag.

“...how much did you pay for _that?_ ” Techno asks. 

“10 diamonds,” Phil shrugs. “And they actually gave me some stuff for free.”

Finally, he grasps and holds up two black discs in torchlight. On one is engraved _Cat,_ and the other, _Mellohi,_ letters curving in pearly white around the centers. The black circles gleam back and forth as he turns his hand, showing countless lines of groves.

Tommy is silent for a long moment.

“I know it’s not the same,” Phil finally says. “But I also have a jukebox in my ender chest. You can listen to them again.”

“I-” Tommy takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. “Okay. Thanks, Phil.”

Phil holds his hand out, and Tommy takes the discs. He stares at them, as if they were foreign objects from a different world whose purpose he has no idea of.

“Thanks,” he echoes again, and Phil nods at the ender chest in the corner of the room. Tommy walks over and places them in.

“Let’s go to sleep, alright?” Phil murmurs. “We still have much flying to do.”

~*~

They don’t speak of the discs when they leave in the morning.

~*~

They've been flying for a little more than 3 weeks, and Tommy hates it. 

It's boring. So. Fucking. Boring. He's taken to Techno's idea of trying some fancy midair tricks, but they can't get too elaborate for the sake of time. 

They eventually land on another island. A city-state, Phil explains, beholden only to themselves. That islands make prime locations for such settlements, especially when far apart.

Tommy wonders if L'Manberg would have had more success on an island. If, instead of some random strip of far out land with mildly discontent citizens that preferred them over Dream, they choose one of his kingdom's numerous isles to base their revolution. There were plenty of cities with an independent streak on those. Geography is everything, according to both Phil and Techno, and wouldn’t they know?

It's not something he should dwell on too much. And Tommy usually doesn't - dwell on what ifs, that is. He's too smart to fall into that trap, or so he would proclaim. 

But the flights are long and his mind wanders. He can't help himself. 

_Like you always do,_ some voice inside him reminds.

Tommy tells that part of him to shut the fuck up.

~*~

Phil greets acquaintances and refreshes himself on news during each stop. Island settlements have ports in abundance, and where there are ports, there are travelers with rumors and speculations and, occasionally, trustworthy information. 

He learns of more unrest and tension in the Dream Kingdom, especially surrounding L’Manberg. The Badlands are getting involved as well. Talk buzzes around the topic like flies to a charred carcass, few able to look away from the spectacle unfolding. 

Eret is king again, apparently. Something about George being exiled. Unless the situation has flipped once more - news travels slower when they’re so far away, taking weeks or sometimes months to reach even busy trade cities with large messenger bird centers.

Phil wonders whether he should treat the whole situation with amusement or concern, and ultimately decides that he simply doesn’t care. Few people here do, further from Dream’s Kingdom and L’Manberg than they’ll ever travel in their lifetime. They’re distant, amusing stories at best, with no direct impact on their lives at all.

He hopes Tommy and Wilbur can, one day, treat it the same way.

~*~

“We’re almost there,” Phil says one night. “I’ve been keeping track of our route, and it’s probably just another day of flying to reach mainland.”

Techno shuffles the blankets of his bed - there had been a cockroach scuttling somewhere, he knew it. Now to slaughter the wretched thing.

“Finally,” Tommy grumbles. “My shoulders hurt so fucking much, this better all be worth it. I’m not using an elytra for the rest of my life.”

“You’ll eat those words one day,” Techno comments.

Though, he agrees with Tommy on one part. A long break from flying would be greatly welcome.

“Well, almost there,” Phil shrugs. “And the winds should be good too. The ships in this area tend to travel fast in the westward direction.”

“Travel fast, you say,” Techno says. He tilts his head. A faint hiss traces his ears.

“Lucky them,” Tommy grumbles. “Bet those people don’t have to deal with shoulder pain to go everywhere.”

Techno grips his blankets, and yanks. A wild flurry of buzzes rise as a dark brown figure shoots across his vision - and then it's dead, a green sludge of guts smeared against a window. He eyes the piece of stained wood in his hands with a look of disdain.

Phil grimaces, and Tommy makes a warbled gagging noise.

“Invasive,” Techno notes. “According to _Flora of Novixl_ , it’s ships which brought them to places they shouldn’t be in. A pest on native plant populations.”

“Is that another stupid metaphor?” Tommy snorts. “Since you love them so damn much, why don’t you compare-”

“Actually, Tommy,” Phil says, and Techno grins. “He was saying we should take a ship the rest of the way there. To, you know. Not have to fly anymore.”

Tommy is silent for a long moment, glancing between the two with increasingly furrowed eyebrows.

“Did - did - you did that on purpose!” He whirled to Techno with a familiar indignance, huffing. “Mocking me, Techno? You’ll be sorry when-”

“Tommy, you’re only mocking yourself,” Techno says, flattening his voice as much as possible. He internally grins as Tommy scowls further.

“Oh shut up! I’ll show you who has the best ideas, we’ll find the best fucking ship-”

“So you agree?” Phil asks. 

Tommy slouches back on his bed with a scowl. 

“Sure,” he mutters. “Sure.”

“So we’re all in agreement…” 

Techno follows Phil’s eyes to Wilbur, staring limply out a window.

“Wilbur?” Phil asks.

“Why do we even bother anymore?” Tommy rolls his eyes. “He never disagrees with anything. The TNT probably blew out his brains too.” There’s a bitter note seeping in, one Techno has quickly gotten used to in the past month. 

Wilbur flinches, ever so slightly.

Phil clears his throat. “Tommy.”

Tommy looks away, and falls silent.

That is also something Techno has gotten used to in the past month. Though perhaps “used to” isn’t the right phrase. It doesn’t surprise him anymore.

But none of it hasn’t begun to feel even the slightest bit normal.

“Ship,” Techno says slowly. “Wilbur, you good with that?”

“Sure,” Wilbur mumbles quietly. Tommy snorts, yet again.

“About 3 to 4 days, then, with good winds,” Phil says. “We’ve made good time so far, so that’s… good.”

Techno scrapes off the bits of dead cockroach the best he could and opens the window. The plank is tossed out, and the window closes again with a snap.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” he says.

~*~

It’s nice to feel a solid, yet moving floor beneath his boots, to ride alongside the rises and falls of the ocean’s precarious whims. Some call it disjointing, dizzying, horrifically unpleasant - Phil calls it entertainingly soothing. 

“Having fun?” he asks as Tommy approaches him.

“The food’s terrible.”

“There’s dried berries in your backpack, if you want a snack.”

Tommy huffs, but presses against the railing beside Phil and stares down into the dancing waters below. A few droplets leap up, grazing his cheeks with a streak of shimmer in the sunlight. 

Phil smiles softly, and leans closer.

~*~

“You doing okay?” Techno slowly sits down next to Wilbur, careful to avoid sudden movements. The blankets crumple with little resistance. 

The compartment is devoid of anyone else. There is only them, the darkness, and the everlasting lull of ocean waves rocking their world back and forth. 

Wilbur remains silent. Techno tries not to sigh. 

“You have to start talking some time, you know,” he tries. 

_Anything_ , he thinks. _Come on, Wilbur._

“I…” Wilbur seems to fold into himself, curling up tighter against the black painted walls. “I don’t know. No. Probably not.”

Techno closes his eyes. Maybe this is a mistake.

It probably is. The mistake being that he didn’t bring Phil down with him. 

But does Phil understand, the hours upon hours Wilbur spent covering every quarter of Pogtopia in buttons, or the maddened ravings he hissed at an increasingly frightened Tommy (while Techno watched in the background shadows)? 

The way dim torchlights flickered erratically as his hands breezed past them, gesturing proclamations of hope and betrayal and tyranny to cold stone walls, or the echoes of sobbing and screaming that rang in Techno’s ears long after they had quieted?

People like having a purpose, Techno knows. His is to conquer, to dominate, to be the best at everything and crush all competition between bloodied fingers and crazed, mocking laughter.

Wilbur has always been far more noble, the rhythm of convictions and constitutions weaving through every declaration. He wants the best for everyone, for the world, to change what he sees into what he believes to be better by the power of his own words and actions - or he wanted to, anyway. 

Whichever it is right now is not a point of concern for Techno.

“You’ve been quiet,” Techno says. He mentally runs through the list he has prepared, and selects a safer question. “Why don’t you go out and see the sun?”

The question is hypocrisy at its finest, but _somehow,_ he doubts Wilbur will care.

Wilbur blinks slowly, and turns away from him.

“Do I deserve the sunlight?”

Techno suddenly feels his blood chill into sharp, stabbing icicles. 

_Oh no._

“You - Phil would-”

He is far, far too in over his head, he realizes. There is absolutely no way he can deal with this. This is the definition of biting off more than he can chew, but he’s already committed, but he can’t-

“Yes,” is what Techno settles on, but it rings hollow even within his own mind.

Sharply, stiffly, he races up and bolts for the door. It just barely slams behind him. 

Leaving Wilbur in the dark again, completely alone and more miserable than ever. 

His chest burns with something painful, swamping his senses with suffocating grip.

Techno doesn’t know why he ever thought this was a good idea. 

~*~

It’s dark. And damp. The walls creak, and it assaults his ears. They’re blank and unforgiving and hold no love.

It’s also cold. But not as cold as before, he thinks, despite the shaking inside of him. 

He wonders if that’s a good thing.

~*~

“Oh my gods, is that _actual fucking landmass?_ ”

“No need to hurt the ocean’s feelings, Tommy,” Techno says. “It’s already had to see your face for the past 3 days.”

Tommy splutters, and with a sigh Phil herds them away from the pier. 

“The only thing we need to get is horses,” he says when the smell of salt no longer clings to everything around them. “Then we’ll find a place to… live, I guess.”

“And do whatever we fucking want without bitches that try to kill us,” Tommy says, with a punctuated vehemence Phil doesn’t expect. 

“And that,” Techno agrees.

Right. That.

~*~

They secure horses, and start riding.

Techno names his Theseus. Tommy eyes him when he tells it so, and he only quirks his mouth in reply. Phil merely shakes his head.

Finding a place they agree upon turns out to be much more difficult than Phil initially thought. He has accounted for some time lost to that, but...

“What about here?”

“It’s so flat. Boring.”

“Tommy, there’s forests nearby.”

“It’s not defensible either, so he actually has a point for once.”

“Like we need defense with you around.”

“I’m lazy. Why work when the geography can work for me?”

“Fair enough, I guess.”

~*~

“Here?” 

“I’m not living on top of a mountain.”

“This is barely a hill, Tommy.”

“How about _no_.”

~*~

“Too swampy.”

“Agreed.”

~*~

“The air’s too moldy.”

“What kind of shitty reasoning is that?”

“You have yours, I have mine.”

~*~

“This looks good,” Phil says.

“More mountains?”

“They’re not that bad.”

They’ve been brushing against a mountain range for the entire journey anyway, riding further and further north. It runs down the continent, and here before them is the point where it brushes the coastline as well, like two ropes intertwining midway. From their vantage point on one of the highest peaks (reached with elytras, after Tommy has grumbled and their horses have been tied down), the lands stretch out before them. 

Points of green and grey slope up and down, and bordering the shore, dark waves lap against towering cliffs. Further out into the mist Phil sees the mottles of red and orange where pines and evergreens mingle with deciduous forests, like the sunset had dappled its colors onto an ocean of swaying leaves. 

In the very, very far distance he can just make out a collection of glowing lights. They’re bunched in a cove, Phil realizes. A small area where the land tilts into gentle slopes, cradled on three sides by sheer mountain cliffs and one side by a blue-gray ocean. 

“There’s a village there,” Phil says. He places a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder and tugs him closer. 

“We’re not living in a place with government,” Techno says flatly. 

“Well, we don’t have to live _there_ ,” Phil says. “But somewhere close by would be nice. We could buy and sell stuff, and access to a seaside port is always good. Plus-”

He points at a river that waves through the valley just beneath them, and traces its path. “It would go just by the village, which makes sense. And there’s probably streams and smaller rivers that run down the mountains around it, which is also ideal.”

“Maybe,” Techno says. He sounds more considerate of the idea, now. 

“Plus, you have your defensibility right there,” Phil grins. “The high ground, remember? And who would go through the trouble of bothering us?” 

Tommy clears his throat.

“Mountains aren’t so bad,” Phil repeats. “In case you haven't noticed, they cut this continent in half and most of it hugs the coastline.”

“Unless you want two more months of horseback riding,” Techno adds.

“It’s not a definite choice,” Phil says, watching Tommy slowly loosen his shoulders. “Let’s just check it out, alright?”

Tommy tugs at the elytra, fingers running through the translucent membrane.

“Alright,” he finally says. 

Phil beams.

~*~

Another day and a half of riding, and they’re at the outskirts of the village.

“We’re not going there,” Techno says. “Not until we’ve geared up.”

Phil internally winces at the terminology, but agrees. The rest of the day is spent coaxing their horses up the tallest bordering mountain.

It’s not bad, he thinks as they’re halfway up. There’s enough arable land to sustain far more than just the four of them, and far more trees and foliage than visible rock. On the side that faces the village a small river indents the mountain, fed by numerous trickling streams of various sizes. The peak stretches above into the clouds, still a distant, faint white dot.

“There?” he murmurs to Techno, pointing at a nearby cave. “High enough for you?”

“Enough for me,” Tommy says. “We’re not living higher than this. The air is killing me.”

“Oh-” Phil bits his lip. “Right, sorry. We didn’t climb up this too quickly, did we?”

“Well, the month of flying helps,” Techno says.

“No nausea? Pain?”

“No, Dadza, the air is not literally killing me right now,” Tommy says. He pauses before adding, “we’ll live on your stupid mountain like cavemen if you really want it so much.”

“Oh, thanks!” Phil sweeps him up in a hug, grinning.

“I regret this already.”

“We should probably start preparing for the night instead of dawdling,” Techno drawls behind them. “Unless you both want to spend the night fighting monsters?”

“Right, right,” Phil laughs. “But let us celebrate a little, okay? We’re here. We’re living here.”

Three hours later, after the cave has been fortified and sleeping areas laid out, Phil watches the sun slowly sink behind the peaks.

The mountaintops are a brilliant golden hue, and the valleys shaded red. Gradients of light fall across the vast landscape around him, shifting and shadowing as the world descends into the night. 

A stray red leaf catches on his right wing, and he pulls it out. Maple, dappled with oranges and yellows, and the faintest hint of green on the stem. The trees reflect such colors, waves of red and orange and yellow and green splashing like paint across the forests that cling to life in the cold, windy mountains. The wind flutters his hair up and brushes thinly against his cheeks, soft as a feather. A few more leaves swirl past. 

Phil has lived in many places. He knows when they begin to feel like home, and when they never will. 

There’s faint rustling behind him. He turns to see Wilbur stepping his way out the cave, eyes downcast.

“Wil,” he calls. Wilbur turns to him.

Phil pats the flat rock he’s sitting on. And slowly, Wilbur makes his way over.

“Are you alright?” Phil asks as he sits down. 

A look of hesitation.

Phil wraps his arms around him, and pulls him closer. Soft hair brushes his neck.

“Tommy and Techno are arguing again,” Wilbur says, voice small. “I - I don’t-”

“It’s alright,” Phil murmurs. “You can always come to me.”

A long moment later, he feels a tiny nod. 

Phil smiles and inhales the sharp, crisp air, hears the distant caws of ravens and screeches of eagles, can feel the thrum of life in this immense and wild territory - and he knows that they have reached a home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, comments appreciated! would love to know what you thought!
> 
> do I use metric system or imperial system or an obscure thing no one knows about or some amalgamation of various unit systems or invent my own units help I can't go much longer without getting some actual damn measurements in here-
> 
> and oh yeah hey they’re FINALLY there haha isn't that funny it only took 13000 words and that was totally planned


	6. when all they can do is stare blankly

Phil can taste the frost in the air, familiar and biting. He doesn't miss the patches of snowdrifts that dot the mountainsides or valleys, the way the glacial tops are far larger than he remembers, from when he last visited the continent during late springtime a few years ago.

Winter has already come. They're in a temporary warm spell, but soon it will snow again, and they need to build up shelter before then.

That brings its own problems. Phil knows from experience that with mountains mean avalanches, and positioning is crucial.

So during the very first stretches of dawn on the second day, when the monsters are still just catching fire, while his sons collect water and ready their supplies, Phil flies around the middling area of the mountain to determine a suitable location.

The caves could work, of course, but Tommy has expressed enough annoyance and privately Phil agrees with some of his gripes. They could do with a much prettier view than dark, damp cave systems, though they wouldn't hurt as a basement if he finds a good position. 

The wind is cold and sharp today, with none of the salty tang he has gotten used to. 

It’s a welcome change, he decides.

From the sky Phil can make out the swaths of color among the mountains - which become more and more full of life the closer he looks. It makes him smile.

After a few minutes of flying around, a large cluster of trees catch his eyes and he flies down towards it. 

It's big enough to be counted as a small forest. The trees are dense, denser than normal on the mountains, and several streams trickle into a river that weaves through the area.

Angling to the right for a better view, Phil realizes the area is raised to a level platform, a higher elevation than the slanted mountainside around it. Yet there’s shallow, sloping indentation downwards beyond the perimeter, the shape of a giant cauldron half-sunk into the mountain.

He flies closer. 

A herd of goats leap away as he lands, boots sinking into soft moss. A bed of leaves litter the rocks and dirt and large patches of grass, while the branches above cling to a scattering of colors against the wind. 

There’s plenty of wood here. The rocky ground twists itself with shapes both concave and convex, areas jagged as broken glass and smooth as slabs of marble. 

Phil welcomes the sight of forests once more, leaning against a towering oak. 

The wind is much softer, occasionally rising in gentle brushes. He runs a hand through his hair. The area is shielded for sure, the raised rocky barrier and dense trees providing natural shields.

A little ways away, he spots a crack in the ground. 

After a few minutes of quiet listening, Phil walks over to investigate.

He kneels down and peers into a ravine that scars into the mountain. The opening itself is relatively small, no longer than he is, and the ground that gives way below slants at an angle. It’s easily large enough for him to slide down. 

The angled terrain that yawns into the depths isn’t terribly steep, and Phil can see the darkness stretching wider as it goes down. Clumps of ferns and twisting weeds and the occasional stubborn sapling grow along the bottom side, ever resolute in the face of an unforgiving environment. 

Phil unslings his bag and places it next to the ravine. Pulls out a lantern and a match, and lights a fire.

Taking a deep breath, he folds his wings and gingerly lowers himself over the edge. 

Loose gravel slides beneath him, crunching ominously as he grips a nearby clump of weeds to slow his fall. The crackling of tumbling stones and lantern fire pounds his ears.

_ Deep breath. You’ve done this before.  _

Phil carefully loosens his grip, and slides further down.

The bottom meets him faster than he realizes, a flat stretch of land just below the darkness. Waving his lantern around the floor, Phil carefully stands straight. He can make out a few streaks of ore, dull lines of colors faintly teasing just beyond the light. But more importantly - space.

The bottom is reasonably flat to walk on, and from what he can tell, stable. He can hear a stream in the dark beyond his vision.

After some exploration, Phil also realizes that it’s relatively small. Walking from one end to the other can be achieved in less than a minute, and the ceiling is still just a few paces taller than him. But it’s just half as wide as it is long, and that’s enough for a significant amount of storage. 

The climb back up takes a bit more time, but a few careful minutes later Phil is blowing out his lantern and swinging his bag back over his shoulder.

~*~

“It’s not bad,” Techno agrees, surveying the area. Tommy mumbles something under his breath, but neither of them pay him mind. 

“About as good as you can hope for in a place like this,” Phil says. “Shall we get going?”

Techno swings up his axe.  _Axe of Peace_ , it’s called, engraved across the silvered handle. 

_ Fitting,  _ Phil thinks. There’s a relief in the idea.

~*~

Trees are quickly chopped, foundations planned out. Phil marks out the dimensions of the house with a scattering of branches in a rectangular shape, including the tiny ravine in the top area of the box. 

Tommy had closed his eyes and sighed when he explained the idea, but eventually nodded. 

Wilbur simply agreed.

“We have to move on, I guess,” was what he said. “I - I don’t want to stop anyone from doing that.”

Phil hugs them both, and nods. Techno watches wordlessly.

They went to work swiftly. The process of building a home is familiar to Phil, and he trusts that his sons know what they’re doing also.

Tommy and Techno go to the river a little ways away to haul back buckets of clay and mud, as well as sacks of grass and other weeds.

Phil stays with Wilbur, like last time, and they sort out piles of stones. Large and small, jagged circles and flat slabs. When the first round of mud and clay arrives, they begin building the foundations. 

“Mix the grass with the mud and clay,” Phil explains to Wilbur. “And then apply.”

They lay the stones and seal them together, and occasionally Tommy pauses in hauling material to help. 

After a few hours, the foundation is complete, a mismatch of stones held together by drying mud, and the floor smoothed over with an extra thick layer of clay. 

The perimeter Phil has laid out is small, just large enough for four small beds and a bit of walking space. They need usable shelter before night, after all, and this is the largest they can build in a day.

“Do you have an axe?” Phil asks Wilbur as they sit down to rest a few minutes. 

“No,” Wilbur says. "I burned everything I could in my ender chest before we left Pogtopia and threw away what I couldn't."

Phil places a hand on his shoulder - but he is no expert on such matters. He can only try - but what if he does more harm than good?

_ One thing at a time, _ he reminds himself.  _ Stability is what's most important right now. _

"We'll get you one, then," Phil says. "We all need to cut enough trees for shelter tonight. Is that alright?"

"Sure," Wilbur says. And he leaves it at that.

Phil reaches over to the ender chest he has placed down, and digs through the cold void of space it contains. He pulls out his own shimmering netherite axe, and then a diamond one he has for backup.

"Here," he says, holding it out by the handle. 

Wilbur takes it.

Phil allows his shoulders to relax. 

~*~

There's plenty of spruce and pine in the forest, tall straight trunks ideal for a quick log cabin. 

Phil's axe fells the trees, skins the rough bark, drags them over to the pile by the foundation. 

Techno and Wilbur do the same, while Tommy cuts notches into the logs and begins securing them on top of each other. They’ll have to rely on the notches for interlocking the wood, and good positioning, for stability for now.

~*~

“The notches go this way, idiot,” Techno rolls his eyes. 

“It’s the same fucking thing! This way works just as well!” Tommy huffs. 

“Tommy, me and Phil have been doing it this way for a long time. You don’t need to go off and experiment right now.”

“Well I  _ know _ this way works-”

“With your vast sums of experience in cabin building?” Techno asks. He stifles a chuckle, and Tommy scowls further.

“I’m the one who’s chopping them, and building-”

“Get back to work, you two,” Phil calls. “We don’t have time.”

Techno takes out his axe and begins cutting out a notch into the log. He raises an eyebrow at Tommy.

Tommy scowls, but pulls out his axe and begins doing the same.

Techno internally breathes a sigh of relief. He isn’t feeling particularly argumentative today, not that they need it. 

After a few more notches, he goes back to chopping wood and stripping the bark, the much more time consuming of the tasks.

_ Thunk. _

The forest is louder when he’s paying attention. The warbles of songbirds, skittering of foxes and rodents, the sound of goat hooves clicking against the cliffs. The drip of fresh rain and trickle of streams, the way the wind murmurs contently through rattling branches. 

_ Thunk. _

Techno had been planning to settle down alone in some area after the revolution. Far away from what he knows would be the blown up remains of L’Manberg, even before Wilbur revealed himself to be the traitor Dream coordinated with.

_ Thunk. _

Perhaps this is it, just with extra steps. He certainly hadn’t anticipated Phil coming along, and then asking that they all leave the continent. 

_ Thunk. _

It’s peaceful, and despite long-standing belief, Techno appreciates the peace. It seems that violence always finds and compels him, one way or the other, but he has been running away from it for a while now.

_ Thunk. _

Blood hasn’t tasted sweet for a long time. 

_ Thunk. _

L’Manberg… why did he go to L’Manberg anyway? Techno was, still is, not sure of the true reason. Something drew him, reading Wilbur and Tommy’s letters, keeping up with news. 

_ Thunk. _

Governments, perhaps, but despite his opposition he’s never actively fought against the idea of them existing until then. It wasn’t the promise of glory or power or even teaching Tommy a lesson, not that he would have ever learned it. 

_ Thunk. _

Well, perhaps Tommy has learned  _ some _ lessons.

_ Craaaaack- _

Techno steps back, and watches the tree begin to lean. It falls slowly at first, then quicker and quicker, and then he hears a shaking series of snaps as it catches on the branches of its brethren in a futile attempt to stay upright. A flock of alarmed chirping rises into the air with a swarm of wingbeats in the distance.

Then, the tree is sideways, silent, and still.

Techno rolls his shoulders, and hefts his axe. He’ll indulge that train of thought later. 

It doesn’t matter too much, in the end.

Techno doesn’t have to justify his actions, least of all to himself.

~*~

"Plank roof or nah?" Techno asks once the walls are higher enough, just half a feet or so above his head. 

Phil glances at the sun, already touching the horizon.

His hands ache, and he’s sure a few bruises will develop from today. 

And the monsters will come out soon, that ever looming threat. 

"No," he says. "Just a layer of logs for now. I'll work on the door."

Techno nods.

"Tommy! Wilbur!" he calls. "Help me get the roof done!"

Phil moves over to the timber pile. He selects a few large planks of wood and several smaller strips that Tommy has also cut out. 

He lays the large ones side by side. Overlays the smaller ones sideways across. Nail them together with the back of his axe and sharp, steel nails he had purchased during the trip here.

A handle for both sides is fashioned from the wood of smaller branches, stripped smooth and further nailed together. 

He digs through his ender chest and finds some hinges, and drags the door up to be nailed.

Once Phil is satisfied, opening and closing the door a few times, he steps inside.

The interior is dark and empty, save for the ravine at the back. He glances up and sees Tommy pushing the last log into place with a grimace, shrouding the cabin in near total darkness. Now, only small cracks of sunlight push through between the logs, and even those determined sources are quickly fading with the night. 

A window should be carved soon, he thinks. But not yet.

He lays a final piece of wood on the ground and chops them into splints. On the back corner’s wall he hammers a sharp piece and hangs a lantern on it. Carefully, he lights the lantern with a match and closes the glass window.

With significantly more light, he sees the floor in more detail now, bits of stone visible through the mostly clay layer. 

The cabin was built in a day and it certainly looks like it, but it will do for now. Techno and him would probably have to keep watch again, just in case, but by tomorrow things should be fortified enough for them all to sleep through the night in peace. 

Phil walks back outside and half carries, half drags two large stones, one for each side of the door. A proper lock can come later.

He glances west. The sun is setting. 

Just in time.

~*~

Without the necessary preparations for an indoor fire, Phil takes out some jerky, as well as an assortment of dried fruits and nuts. After eating, he begins discussing plans for expansion with Techno.

“A fireplace here would be good,” Techno says, tapping his foot on the floor of the left side of the cabin. “The door’s on the shorter side of the building, so heat in the middle of the long side would warm things up more effectively.”

“The other side, idiot,” Tommy says. “Put it on the right side.”

“Tommy, stop arguing every chance-”

“I’m not-”

“Tommy,” Phil says. “Please, you can’t-”

_ “I’m not!”  _ Tommy yells, with a ferocity that throws Phil back with wide eyes, and he stomps into the floor with a hiss. Wilbur flinches. “Maybe if either of you bothered to listen to me and stop cutting me off at every fucking moment you’d  _know_.” 

He turns around and throws himself on his bed, a few planks of wood and a mess of wool. 

Phil gapes, mind racing with a jumble of shock and confusion and something stabbing-

Tommy suddenly lets out a muffled, piercing screech, and it strangles Phil’s ears horrendously. Dread congeals in his stomach, sickening.

He feels nauseous. What -  _ not listening? _ He tries to think, to understand-

They never did let Tommy explain, but Tommy didn’t - he never really provided explanations-

_ Do you really know him, after all of that? _

His throat chokes, and Techno is glancing between them both with a befuddled expression, as though he doesn’t comprehend any of it.

_ Do something. _

_ What? What can I- _

_ He’s your son, do  _ something-

The screeching abruptly cuts off.

Phil’s on his feet and next to Tommy in the next instant, shaking his shoulders.

“Tommy, what is it?”

With a strike of horror, Phil realizes Tommy is crying.

Tommy has only ever cried in his dreams since they left Dream’s lands, resolute in his conviction to not break down in the waking world and Phil thought he was getting better and this is all his fault-

“Tommy,” Techno says, and Phil realizes he’s suddenly standing next to him. 

“Neither of you listen to me,” Tommy gasps through sobs. “It’s always ‘shut up’ or ‘stop being dumb’ or whatever, both of you keep cutting me off and all my ideas keep getting dismissed, and the - the more it happens the more I keep trying to be heard but you guys keep shutting me down more-”

He breaks off himself this time, and sobs a bit more.

“It’s like both you are Wilbur all over again but without the craziness and just with more apathy and it’s fucking worse somehow.”

Techno is silent, unmoving and face carefully blank. Phil sees the quiet twitch of his fingers as he processes Tommy’s words.

Phil takes a deep breath and desperately scrabbles to put his thoughts together. 

_ Pogtopia _ he thinks weakly.  _ L’Manberg. _

What was it, Techno has said, Wilbur has written in those few letters, about discs and revolutions and sacrifices? That the entire thing had been Wilbur’s idea, Tommy strung along with fantasies of glory and freedom and fame, that-

_ “Make no mistake,” Techno snorts, reading the letter. “Dream is in full control here, and he likes making people suffer.” _

_ “And you want to join in because…” Phil raises an eyebrow. _

_ “Look,  _ my _ goal isn’t to drive Tommy and Wilbur crazy or suicidal, unlike Dream. And I’m the only one who could reasonably oppose him.” _

_ “So you want to help.” _

_ “Maybe. I want to  _ liberate. _ Whether or not they’ll consider it ‘help’ is up for debate.” _

Since when was Tommy ever consulted or allowed control or deciding for himself in anything, when has it ever succeeded-

_ “Wilbur, stop,” Tommy mumbles hysterically beneath the blankets, “you’re making a mistake, don’t-” _

_ Phil places a hand on his shoulder, and tries to stifle the burning frustration inside of him. He can’t stop nightmares, can’t change the past, can’t do anything- _

And neither can Tommy-

Words fly away as he grasps at them, and he stutters for a few minutes before sitting down next to Tommy and placing a hand on his shoulder.

_Start simple_ , he thinks weakly. _ Always start simple. _

“I - I’m sorry,” he manages. “I didn’t-”

Didn’t mean to do what? Make his son feel so small and helpless and insignificant after everything he’s been through with L’Manberg and Wilbur and Dream?

Didn’t mean to treat him like the foolish child he still thought of Tommy as, even after multiple wars and the hidden blades of politics that he knows slices away either a person’s childish naivety, or their head?

There’s no excuse. Phil has fucked up.

_Again_. 

_ “Kill me, Phil, kill me-” _

He thinks of Wilbur’s hollow eyes and crazed laughter. He thinks of his own vow to keep them together and heal them no matter what.

He feels a scathing fire in his throat, choking, a sentence of shame. 

_ You’ve failed as a father,  _ **_again._ **

“I…”

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, stricken and unmoving.

Then, something brushes his wings. 

“Phil,” Techno says. He pauses, and continues after no response. “Philza. Dad.”

“Yes?” Phil whispers.

“What-” Techno leans down and drops to a whisper as well. “What do I do?”

Oh. Techno’s - it isn’t fair to place Techno in this situation either. He has to...

Phil takes another deep breath and grips the wool blanket of the bed. It grounds him long enough to lean over further and shake Tommy’s shoulders.

“Tommy,” he says. “I’m sorry. And I promise to - to listen to you more. And not cut you off.”

“Unless you’re being really annoying,” Techno says. “In which case you deserve it.”

“Techno,” Phil says. “Please.”

“I promise I won’t keep cutting Tommy off or dismissing his ideas, unless-” Techno breaks off, face twisting into one of hesitation for a moment before sighing. “I promise I won’t.” 

“I fucking hate you bitches,” Tommy screams back, face still buried in the blankets, but there’s less rage in them now. He seems more subdued, more… defeated.

Phil hates it even more.

“Tommy, why do you think the fireplace should go on the opposite side?” Phil asks. 

There’s a long silence. He thinks he should be used to them by now, but it twists tighter knots in his stomach each time.

“There’s a better view on the left side,” Tommy finally says quietly. “You can see the other valleys and mountains over that wall.

It’s true, Phil realizes. The trees are more thinly spread on the left side of the cabin, and the forest ends shortly, with a relatively lower wall that drops to show the rest of the mountain range. A dense thicket of trees followed by a much sheerer cliff borders the right side instead.

“That’s a good idea,” he says. “Right, Techno?”

“...right,” Techno says. “We’ll do that.”

“Thanks for the suggestion, Tommy,” Phils adds.

After another moment, Tommy responds. 

“You’re welcome.”

Phil reaches down and hugs him tightly. After a while, Tommy leans in closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, feedback, ect greatly appreciated, like always!
> 
> I’ve decided to use a blend of imperial units, as well as some old units whose use has now been discontinued, and some made up ones too. Metric units, while a great staple of the modern age, have too much of a connotation for this setting (plus the idea of global or continental standardization exactly isn’t too far along here). 
> 
> I‘m falling back into my obsessive research habits. Looked at so many pictures of mountains and wooden cabins and Youtube videos on people building log cabins (oddly satisfying?) and searched what kind of building materials were used pre-industrial era and avalanche prevention stuff.


	7. at one time in the world there were woods that no one owned

Techno guards the tiny cabin the entire night, sitting on his bed with a sharpened sword. Phil tries to convince him to let him take over for a while, but Techno refuses with a silent shake of his head and a blink of dull, heavy eyes.

Phil is too tired to pursue the fight. Hopefully, they’ll all be able to sleep next time.

When morning comes, they begin building once again.

~*~

The sky is clear and cloudless, to Phil’s immense relief.

“Tommy, do you want to-” Phil hesitates, and continues. “Do you want to cut the planks? Or reinforce the cabin?”

“The planks,” Tommy says, and glances at Wilbur.

“I’ll pack the mud,” Wilbur says. And he moves to begin before Phil can ask further.

So while Wilbur packs mud and grass and wood chips into the cracks between the logs, and Tommy hefts his axe, Phil goes out with Techno to chop wood. 

~*~

Tommy stands, arching up. He rolls his shoulders, steps onto the large stone that they’ve used as a makeshift ladder, and begins rolling off the logs Techno had used as a makeshift roof.

Once all the logs are on the ground, Tommy takes out his axe. 

_ Planks, _ he reminds himself.  _ We need planks. For a roof. _

He begins slicing off the bark. Measures out appropriate lengths and cuts. 

Phil had taken out from his ender chest and left behind a saw as well, and Tommy uses it to cut the logs into smooth, rectangular pieces. 

Measure carefully again.

The plumes of sawdust eventually force him to shut his stinging eyes, and Tommy quickly waves them away with his hands before resuming.

After 20 minutes, he decides he can’t take the silence of conversation anymore.

“Wil,” he says, glancing at his brother. A part of him still recoils at the idea of making conversation with Wilbur, all crazed laughter and dead eyes, but it’s a part that’s been dimming slowly throughout their entire journey.

If he's leaving all of L'Manberg behind with no plans to return, with the intent to throw that whole past behind… does L’Manberg really matter?

Does Wilbur's betrayal really matter? 

They should, and Tommy wants them to  _ so _ badly, because if they didn't - it would mean the entire past 2 years or so would have been in vain, would have been completely  _ pointless. _

But Tommy stares at the axe in his hand and cabin to his right and the mountain air that is both so familiar and so foreign, and his family all surrounding him, working together again, and he-

-he doesn't know. He's not sure he wants to know. 

He has to talk. To someone. The silence is too much, and he needs a distraction.

"Wilbur," he says again, louder and more insistent. 

Wilbur slowly pauses, and turns to stare at him. He’s stained with mud from shoulders to shoes, hands covered in squelching brown. Two years ago, Tommy is sure, he would never have volunteered for or accepted the job so readily.

A lot can change in two years.

_ (A lot has changed.) _

Fuck change. It has done nothing but screw Tommy over. 

_ (Except when it hasn't.) _

“Yes?” Wilbur finally asks, as though he’s been waiting for a ball that never dropped. His tone is flat. Expectant. Of what, Tommy doesn’t know. He feels like he doesn’t know Wilbur at all now, the brother he once loved reduced a withered husk stripped all the way down to bone.

“Talk to me,” Tommy demands. 

“About what?”

Tommy hefts his saw and begins cutting planks again.

“Something. You love talking about things, Wilbur, just start. It’s not that fucking hard.”

Wilbur is silent for a few moments, and Tommy resists the urge to shake him. He can’t. Phil would be disappointed, Wilbur would break further in some unimaginable way even if it  _ is _ his own fault in the first place (not that Tommy cares at all). 

“Wil-”

“This is a nice place,” Wilbur suddenly says. “It’s pretty.”

Tommy blinks, and glances at the forest. The mountains around them, stretching into the foggy distance. The whispering rattles of the branches as the forest sways around them. The cool, sailing wind and bite of frost in the air. 

“Go on,” he says. The log he’s sawing splits, and Tommy hauls the two long pieces apart. He pulls one onto the rock table again and continues sawing again.

“I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing,” Wilbur says. “About L'Manberg, that is. But I can't stop thinking about it.”

“Well, there’s no plans to go back,” Tommy mutters, and something like regret twinges within him at the thought. 

But he pushes it away. He’s made his choice, and let it never be said that Tommy can’t commit to his choices.

“Right,” Wilbur says. “That’s where all the traitors are. But Tommy, I can't stop thinking about the traitors either. Sometimes I think I should go back and blow it all fucking up again, or just go  _ back. _ I was supposed to die with it, but then Phil refused, but I still want to die with it, Tommy. It’s  _ my _ L’Manberg.”

Tommy freezes.

"That's… not what you're supposed to do, Wilbur," he says. But then something within him seizes as he realizes there's a familiar shadow in Wilbur's eyes, dark and haunting and oh so familiar and- 

-for a moment Tommy hurled back into the ravine, walls crushing closer and closer as Wilbur's declarations madness and villainy claw through his ears and screech in his mind with a litany of mania and confusion-

Tommy throws down the saw and tumbles in an effort to sit down and clutches the boulder next to him. 

No, this was the same but so different as well, the words a defeated murmur and the shadows a pale initiation of what they once were, and Wilbur is defeated and his dreams of villainy should be  _ gone. _

_ But Wilbur's not gone. He's still alive. _

"Don't die, Wil, Phil would be so mad," Tommy whispers. His throat creaks with the words.

"Would he?" Wilbur mutters, and that familiar doubt is there again. 

Tommy sucks in a deep breath. 

He's never had the same interest in stories and writing as Techno has, but he's heard his fair share just by proxy of being around him. 

Back during their time in Pogtopia, Tommy once thought of a tale he'd heard long ago, about a man who fell in love with a statue of a woman he had created. He slowly stopped eating and drinking and working, mind delving deeper and deeper into desire and yearning for that woman, a cold, lifeless statue, to love him back. And he had prayed and prayed to the gods, and eventually his wish was granted when the statue came alive.

Wilbur was that man, and L'Manberg that statue, and Dream that amused god, Tommy had thought at the time. Just as obsessive and just as fanatical. But he would eventually win L'Manberg's freedom, true freedom, and they would have a happy ending.

Now, Tommy remembers a different version of the tale, the story reimagined. A much more interesting - and realistic take. 

The story goes like this:

Someone stole that statue to sell for profit, and the man chased after him. Slowly, he descended into madness as his attempts at retrieval became more and more desperate. 

At the climax, the man was faced with the fact that he couldn't escape with the statue. That the antagonist had too much power, and him too little. 

So he smashed it into fine marble dust, declaring "my love, if I can't live with your beauty and life, then no man alive deserves you either.” 

And then, the man had killed himself. Drove that same hammer through his very own skull.

_ “You know, Tommy, I want that TNT to blow me up as well. It’s fitting end for a villain, don’t you think? But I’ll have won, oh, I'll have won that war nonetheless!” _

Wilbur is the man, alright, Tommy thinks. A sickening feeling pools inside of him.

But.

Tommy  _ was _ Theseus, once upon a time. Tommy doesn’t think he is Theseus any longer. He doesn’t remember any part of the tale about Theseus leaving his country willingly to live with his family on another continent. 

“Come one, Wilbur, don’t be an idiot,” Tommy says.  _ Don’t be an idiot yourself.  _ “Of course Phil wants you around. He would have killed you otherwise.”

Slowly, his hand crawls towards the saw. He picks it up, stands up, and begins cutting planks again. 

“It’s like I’m not here,” Wilbur says. To himself, or no one, or the world, Tommy never has any idea. He’s used to his strange ramblings, but it doesn’t mean they don’t creep him out. 

Tommy hates it. 

“Stop that,” Tommy said. “Just pack the fucking mud, Wilbur. It’s not hard. Don’t think about anything else.”

“But L’Man-”

“L’Manberg is  _ far _ away, and we are  _ never  _ going anywhere near that green bastard  _ ever _ again unless it’s to  _ beat the fucking shit out of him, _ and even then  _ you’re _ not coming with us!” Tommy snaps. His hands are shaking. 

Dimly, he thinks that this might be dangerous. He could cut his hands off with the saw, or cut  _ something, _ with a shaking grip and sharp object and even sharper temper. It’s one of the first things Phil taught him;  _ don’t hold weapons when you’re not thinking straight, unless you have to fight. _

He tries to let go. Wilbur has a terrified, stricken look on his face, like L’Manberg has blown up all over again and he’s forced the clean through its rubble, forced to prepare and bury all the dead bodies that came along with it. 

Tommy focuses again on the wood in front of him, and continues sawing. 

“Don’t think about L’Manberg, Wilbur,” he says. “It’s what got us into that whole fucking mess in the first place.”

His entire body is shaking now. Part of it is fear, incredulity, even - back in Pogtopia, Tommy could never have imagined even  _ giving _ Wilbur the orders, dictating what he could and could not say and having it followed. Wilbur had called all the shots. If not him, then Dream.

It is always  _ someone.  _

This is - this is new, Tommy realizes. And it makes him scared. He doesn’t know if he likes it, even though his mind tells him he should.

Wilbur doesn’t respond.

~*~

Techno and Phil eventually drag back several more trees, and they begin the framework for a room. 

Nails aren’t needed for log cabins, though they throw in a few anyway for good measure. A pillar log of support is firmly sunk into the middle of the cabin.

“How many layers do you want?” Techno asks as he fits a long, pale plank across the top of the support log, and on the triangular frames on each side of the cabin. 

“At least two,” Phil calls back. “Use your judgement.”

Techno pulls out some nails, and begins hammering.

They also agreed on making an upper attic, so sleeping space would be less crowded. Phil puts together an actual ladder, and they lay a flat foundation of planks across the top of the cabin first. He, Phil, and Tommy walk across it afterwards, testing strength. Eventually, a second layer of planks and additional nails are added.

Techno hopes they don’t run out of nails soon. That would mean going to the village, where they could undoubtedly buy more. 

Eventually, a steep, slanted roof is built as well, two layers of wood overlapping for an airtight seal. He and Tommy cling to the top and knock to test the stability of each area.

Sometime during all this, Phil builds a campfire in front of the cabin and cooks some ptarmigans Techno down has shot down, along with some mushrooms and watercress. 

Everything they began - the roof, the attic, reinforcement of the cabin - is completed just as the sun sets. The cracks between the logs are packed with mud and wood, and the roof is about as stable and sturdy as Techno and Tommy can reasonably make it.

The door is also stronger, reinforced with more planks and a locking system of metal rods.

There is a pile of spare wood planks and logs stacked outside, as well as a separate pile of small branches and leaves, bark and wood chips. Fire kindling.

There is no way the monsters can break through now, Techno decides. It’s cold, but that can be fixed soon also.

It doesn’t mean he’ll sleep. But he can rest a little easier now.

The end of their second day in the mountains ends with more soup, Techno and Wilbur climbing up into the attic with a lantern and bundles of wool blankets, and a relatively peaceful night for all of them. 

~*~

On the third day, they lay the foundation for plans. Large plans.

“The faster we can have a proper house, the better,” Phil says. “A large one with room to expand for more.”

“Ideally, we want to take advantage of that view Tommy pointed out,” Techno says. He eyes the area up and down, mentally mapping dimensions in his head. “Once we get a second floor going, it’ll be high enough to have a view of any intruders from that direction.”

“So, like this?”

Phil takes a stick with the end dipped in dripping mud, and roughly sketches a large box shape across the rocks and dull green grass. The right side borders their cabin and stretches beyond its back as well.

“That looks good,” Techno says. “Tommy’s idea was actually a really good one. A fireplace on the left side of the cabin would have complicated things.”

Tommy’s shoulders raise just a tiny bit. 

~*~

With winter already here, a farm is unfeasible. But there’s still plenty to do.

A fireplace, first of all. Techno takes a pickaxe and carefully mines a sunken indent in a part of the floor on the middle of the cabin’s right side. They gather more stones and mud and pack them together, and begin to build it up.

They’ll be living in the cabin for a good while. 

Phil painstakings seals every crack and possible loose area he could find, and instructs his sons to do the same. They make the stones at least two layers thick and slowly build up to the top, filling and packing everything between with mud and clay, ending with a small chimney.

When it’s finished, Phil splashes a bit of water on the surrounding walls, and on some pieces of wood just outside the curved shape of the opening. 

He boils stew over the flame and breathes a sigh of relief when no trails of steam waft around them.

~*~

“Is this tall enough?” Tommy asks, gripping his legs around the top of the fence tightly. Techno glances up, blinking at him with that familiar expression of perplexity. 

“What?” Tommy scowls. “Getting mad about nothing again?”

Techno blinks. “No. I just didn’t expect you to ask if you were doing something right.”

Tommy felt another sear of annoyance inside him, that frustration bubbling up again.

“Well, if you don’t want me to ask then fine! I’ll just do whatever I fucking want,” he snaps.

_ Hold it together, Tommy, _ he quickly shushes to himself.  _ Prove those motherfuckers wrong. _

“Well, I never said that,” Techno says. “Yeah, it’s tall enough. Just make sure you leave enough room inside.”

“Right, right,” Tommy mutters, and prepares to lower himself down. 

After the fireplace was done and meal eaten, they (minus Wilbur, because of fucking course,) had decided to fence the area around the cabin and the foundations of their large house. 

Nothing large or towering - just a wooden barrier that goes up to Tommy’s chin, reinforced to keep out monsters. Most of them are far too dumb to climb anything, and Techno has said he has a plan for those that can.

They include a large enough empty space inside as well, for any other immediate structures they might need through the winter. 

It included their horses, which have been forced to huddle outside with leads around a fence post. They had been trusting that any neighs of pain would be enough to wake Techno up and into action, but with a fenced area their animals could rest easier as well.

Tommy wonders what Phil’s overall plan is as he hammers another plank into the ground with his axe, and then sharpens the top to a triangular point.

He resolves to ask soon.

By the end of the day, they don’t finish the fenced perimeter, large as it is, but they get the beginnings of it done. The planks are driven deep into the ground, the tops a row of spikes. 

Good enough, Tommy decides that night. 

~*~

The fourth day brings more work.

“We should prepare for crops anyway,” Techno says. “The streams and river are nearby, but not near enough.”

“So you’re suggesting a canal?” Phil asks.

“A reservoir as well.”

“With fish,” Tommy says. “I want fish. A fish pond.”

“Sure,” Techno shrugs. Fish can be handled easily enough. Phil gives them both a strange look, and glances back at Wilbur. 

Wilbur, who is still slumped and leaning against the door of their cabin. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

Wilbur rarely pays attention, nowadays, though the strangest of things pull him out of his trance. Like mentions of going down to mine, or glimpses of the village nestled in the valley below. 

“It means we’ll still have to go to the stream to get drinking and cooking water,” Phil sighs. “But alright.” 

“We can always make another one,” Techno says.

After some deliberation, the four of them begin carving out a large half-circle in the ground a little ways away from the front of the cabin, within the fenced area, shoveling up loose dirt and prying off rocks. Those materials are piled separately and kept nearby - building materials, after all, shouldn’t be wasted in a haphazard scatter.

After it’s around 5 feet deep at its center and 6 feet across, they dig a small channel to the large stream nearby. It’s just a dozen yards or so away, but that difference will be felt when they try to water crops in the spring. 

As Tommy shovels the last bits of dirt away, a trickle of water floods from the stream and into the channel, towards the hole. They continue shoveling more, and the trickle turns into its own steady stream, bubbling softly. 

Soon, they had a pond. Phil takes a piece of wooden plank and shoves it into the channel once the water has filled up to prevent future fish from escaping. They can create a better system later.

~*~

Eventually, Phil hopes that they can spread some sort of light source throughout the entire island. But for now they’ll have to make do with some torches ready to be lit at a moment’s notice, and Techno.

Speaking of which.

“We need to go down to the village eventually,” Phil points out as the four of them walk through the forest. “Even if we can mine redstone for permanent lamps, we still need to buy animals. And seeds. And glass. And food, eventually.”

A stray maple leaf, somehow still a deep green in the winter chill of the air, falls in front of him. Phil stops and blinks as the sunlight reflects off its shimmering dew, a tiny droplet of rainbows dance for a fleeting moment before his eyes.

“We don’t need to today,” Techno says. “There’s enough forage around here still, and I can hunt pretty much anything.”

“I’m in favor of waiting,” Tommy says. “People are so fucking annoying.”

Wilbur is silent.

“Wil?” Phil prompts.

“I don’t care,” he says flatly. Phil frowns, but decides now isn’t the time to poke into it.

They finally stop at their destination, the clear, rippling river that cuts through the shielded area of land they’d made the beginnings of their home on. 

Dark shapes flash below the surface. Rocks both smooth and jagged jut out from the water, their sides a haze of green and gray. The river is relatively small, and flowing slower in the more level elevation - though Phil can hear the distant roar of a waterfall. 

He plops down the two large buckets he’d been carrying, and Tommy does the same. Techno unslings his bag, pulls out four fish rods and a net, and holds them out.

~*~

When Techno stands in the water, the unusual fiery heat of his body spreads and scares all surrounding life away, a beacon that proclaims destruction and death. He has to lurk at the edges instead, net in hand and eyes trained, to quickly scoop up live catches.

It’s a fitting metaphor for his life, he thinks. Oftentimes he’s left wondering why Phil ever bothered to raise him in the first place, or why Wilbur and Tommy still want to stick around.

Perhaps his net is just that strong, his grip just that tight. It’s a thought that plagues in his nightmares, the rare few times he does sleep.

A vision of green eyes and a pearly white mask flashes in his mind as Techno dumps into the bucket a net full of three rainbow trout, scales glinting like mirrors in the sun. 

~*~

They catch fish until the sun begins to set, and come back to the pond with bucketfuls of them. Most are released into it, alive and darting, while 3 are selected and speared with a trident to become dinner.

~*~

On the fifth night the winds howl with snow. Phil wakes up in the morning to find their cabin covered in sheets of cold white, and they resolutely push forth to make more fires and clear the area. 

~*~

By the end of the week, they have some chairs and a table built for the cabin, and the stone foundations of the large house started.

The fencing and lighting of their marked area is complete as well, ensuring even further protection from mobs. Techno lays wire traps on the tops, and every morning they’re greeted with the sight of a few giant, half-dead spiders twitching weakly in the metal snares.

“Gross,” Tommy wrinkles his nose as Techno slices through a dead arthropod and begins unwinding string from somewhere in its abdomen. 

“String is string,” Techno shrugs. “I can use this to kill more of its brethren, by the way. Set noose traps. It’s dramatic irony at its finest, I tell you.”

“Tommy, help me pluck out the eyes,” Phil says. “You too, Wilbur, help Techno with the string. These are valuable resources.”

Wilbur walks past him, kneeling next to another spider with a sword in hand. 

Tommy sighs, but rolls up his sleeves. His red and white shirt has long since been replaced by a white wool sweater, and he shivers slightly as he exposes his bare arms to the biting air. It feels like tiny pinpricks, invisible needles along his skin.

“The things I do for you guys,” he mutters, and Techno snorts. 

“Get used to it. I’m planning on trapping some zombies next as a food source for some dogs.”

~*~

In a large patch of deep, dense dirt some ways behind the cabin, beneath a towering oak and surrounded by dense thickets, away from the eyes of his family, Tommy takes a shovel and digs up the land. He plants each of the ten moobloom bulbs, one by one, and carefully covers them again. 

Mooblooms are spring-blooming plants, and Tommy hopes - well, it could be too late, and soil too coarse, and weather too cold - but he hopes at least some will make it through to flower in the spring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feedback appreciated but no pressure!
> 
> Longer times between updates because it’s finals season in schools!!! YAYY They’re not until early January for me but school has been picking up pace pretty fast. The first semester is 3 weeks shorter than normal which means we’re going through a final push of really fast and condensed material right now, which also means busy test time. So yeah, sorry for the later updates. 
> 
> Man, I am so looking forward to 2nd semester, especially towards the later end when my extracurriculars also wrap up. It’s longer, which means a thinner workload overall, and they put all my easy classes there lmao. It’ll be a much more chillax time.


	8. nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave

When Phil wakes up, it is to the soft humming of music, rhythmic and flowing like river water over smooth stones.

He turns and opens his eyes. Tommy is hunched over the jukebox Phil had taken out from his ender chest last night, hugging the frayed edges with a closed expression of ferverence. His eyes are closed, face set in a peaceful expression. The first in his sleep since they left L’Manberg.

Phil smiles. Yawning softly, he steps around the table, unlatches the lock on the door, and pushes it.

He feels it give way the slightest bit, but it doesn’t budge after another hard push.

He rolls his eyes, and pulls the door inward instead.

A wall of white taller than his knees greets him, submerging the ground beneath its ocean. Phil takes a moment to appreciate Techno’s idea of placing planks of wood over their fish reservoir.

On the far edge of the cabin, tucked in a row from the fireplace to the corner, are four shovels. It isn’t like they are new to the concept of preparation, after all.

~*~

Thankfully, they all have clothing that will suit them well enough for the cold, at least for now. Techno had dug through his ender chest and pulled out clothes from his Antarctic Empire days. A furry, hooded blue cloak, heavy woolen garments, boots of soft deerskin, and winter gloves. Phil has a similar outfit, with the addition of a soft trapper hat.

Tommy and Wilbur make do with Techno and Phil’s long coats as well as their own, along with boots and gloves Techno had had the foresight to purchase some time during their numerous stops on the way here. 

Tommy also receives, after a moment of deliberation on Techno’s part, his trapper hat. Techno doesn’t need it anywhere near as much, anyway, and it will be worth it to hear just a few less complaints. 

Wilbur declines Phil’s offer.

~*~

“It’s so fucking cold,” Tommy complains, kicking a drift of snow away. The flakes sparkle like tiny gemstones in the sunlight for a few fleeting moments before dissipating into nothingness. 

“Tell that to the weather,” Techno huffs. His shoveling is the opposite of Tommy’s - steady, focused, and fast. “Get shoveling unless you want us to be trapped inside one day.”

Because that was the big thing - the cold isn’t the biggest threat, and neither is a lack of supplies. Rather, it’s the snow drowning everything and impeding all progress until well into spring. They have to shovel their area clear after every storm - if not, it'll eventually be impossible to shovel at all.

Snow stacks, and it stacks _hard._ Back during his and Phil’s days as rulers of the Antarctic Empire, Techno learned just how brutal it could be. Snow left to its own devices, to pile up and up - they will eventually be faced with a towering wall as hard as packed ice. It _becomes_ packed ice.

And it becomes a _pain_ to remove. Constant fire is the best bet - otherwise, taking a pickaxe to it is almost as notoriously laborious as mining obsidian.

“I’m bored already,” Tommy says eventually. They’re almost halfway done shoveling their fenced area, with Phil taking to carrying buckets of excess snow and flying them to dump over ledges, while the rest were packed along the fences. Techno has _just_ begun allowing himself to hope that maybe he can carry out the task in blissful quiet. 

“What alternate reality have you been living in in the past week?” he asks, suppressing a sigh. 

“One where I’m not freezing fucking cold,” Tommy grumbles. “Bet I wouldn’t have to deal with this if I had stayed back in L’Manberg.”

Techno pauses in his shoveling for the briefest second, and feels Wilbur still in movement next to him as well.

“Wonder what Tubbo’s doing right now…” Tommy continues, blissfully ignorant of their reactions. “Probably something more fun than this.”

It sounds normal, like his usual complaining. But who is Techno to understand?

A few moments later, however, Wilbur’s shoulders slowly lower. He goes back to shoveling, eyes dulling into that blank, filmy state again. 

Techno blinks. Wilbur may be… unstable, but he is still Wilbur. He would know, wouldn’t he?

Some part of him pricks with unease at the idea of trusting the judgement, as it always does, but Techno has few options. Pursuing the matter on his end will not result in any favorable outcomes. He supposes that this will have to be enough.

~*~

They eventually realize the utility of using the snow as walls in themselves and begin packing them in a more purposeful order along the fences. The snow layer eventually becomes higher than the wooden barrier in some areas, though it can be attributed largely to Tommy trying to build “an actual fucking wall.”

By the time they are done shoveling and shaping, 2 hours later, with the ground of snow left only a finger or so deep in most areas within their fences, Phil can tell that Tommy and Wilbur are ready to slump back into their bed and sleep the day away. 

They haven’t had to deal with major environmental challenges for a few years now, with L’Manberg and exploration of warmer areas, and thus also lack the experiences he and Techno have gone through. As he watches Tommy snuggle into his blankets to warm up, he hopes that this winter will provide a more stress free challenge for them.

Something calming. Something Phil can help with, in any capacity.

After all, monsters and the weather are far, far easier for Phil to protect them from than politics. One he has some knowledge in playing, but the other is his domain.

“Techno?” 

“Yes?”

Phil looks up. “Could you hunt something for us? I’ll get ready to prepare breakfast. Or lunch, I guess.”

“Sure.”

As Phil leans down to slice some leftover onions and chickweed, he hears a faint click, and the whining of metal hinges. 

The fire is still going strong, and the cabin is left with a warm, dry atmosphere. He can hear Tommy muttering faintly to himself, while a focus of his ears can detect the faint scratching of quills on paper from upstairs in the attic. 

It is familiar, memories easing into him from a decade ago when they were also all just like this. Together, out of the reach of anyone who could even hope to threaten them. 

Phil allows himself a smile as he pushes the vegetables off the cutting board and into a pot with his knife. 

This... this is much more familiar territory. Different, but also familiar. He hopes he can get used to it. 

~*~

Techno is back with two marmots and a rabbit in a matter of minutes. It’s impressive, even for him. 

They eat in relative peace, between Tommy’s usual comments and Techno’s quips while Phil tries to hold back laughter. 

Despite it all, there is still an aching hole in their conversations now, one Phil finds impossible to ignore. 

Like a black splotch of darkness against a bright yellow wall. Wilbur always eats in silence now, unless prompted with questions. Even then, he doesn’t answer the majority of them. 

Phil feels a gaping pain in those moments, when he tries and fails to elicit some sort of reaction, but he is still at a loss even after several weeks. With no idea what to say or do, what draws Wilbur out of his deadened state those rare few times. 

It’s like a tiny pool of dread along the same lines as the one he felt when he realized with increased certainty that he was too late to stop his son. But slower, lurking in flickering shadows just out of sight, crawling up and up. 

Phil hates this, this sense of... _irresponsibility._ Of not knowing what to do. 

He can only keep trying. And he _will_ keep trying. 

Phil has resolved to be there for Wilbur for as long as he can. He has failed once, after all, and he will not allow himself to stand idly by again.

~*~

After the meal, Techno decides to broach the obvious subject.

“So, we need to explore that hole in our floor,” he says, leaning against the table. 

They had placed a large plank of wood over it, when they first made the cabin, and the past week of busyness in other areas has rendered it untouched. But there is much waiting for them down there, if Phil is to be believed, and in the winter months that could become crucial.

“I agree,” Phil says. He takes one last drink and sets down a near empty mug. “At the very least it’ll be a good storage space, not to mention I heard a stream down there, so that’s water covered in case we can’t go out.”

Both of them turn, slowly, to Tommy.

Tommy scowls. “What?”

His eyes darken, in a way Techno is both wholly familiar and unfamiliar with. He wonders yet again just who the boy sitting across from him really is, and if he can be considered a boy at all. 

“Are you…” Phil pauses, blinking slowly. He shoots a quick glance at Techno, who merely shrugs back. 

“Are you alright with coming down with us? Or do you want to stay up here?” he finally says.

Tommy stares at the two of them for a long, drawn moment, and then slowly turns to Wilbur.

Wilbur, who is still quietly picking around the last of his rabbit meat with a fork. He hasn’t looked up the entire time.

An expression crosses Tommy’s face, one Techno can’t recall seeing on him before. It is familiar, somehow.

 _He looks like Phil_ , Techno realizes after a few seconds. Phil, when he was holding Wilbur’s sword. Standing in front of him. Hearing Wilbur beg for an end to his life, each word picked up by Techno’s traitorously sensitive ears. 

That same quiet expression, a steel plate concealing a volcano of fears and horrors and panicked decisions. Like they were battling their worst nightmares within their mind. It’s a feeling which Techno hopes he will never have to experience himself, though he isn’t sure he’ll recognize it either way. 

“Sure,” Tommy finally mutters, and quickly adds in a louder tone, “I’ll come. Down. With you two.”

_With you two._

“Wilbur,” Techno says, nudging his shoulder. “Do you want to come down with us?”

Wilbur takes a moment to respond, like his consciousness has been partially sucked to some other plane of existence. 

“I don’t… it’s not L’Manberg,” he says. “Not even Pogtopia. It’s all so... different. But not.”

Techno has only a flashing second of concern before Tommy suddenly slams a fist down onto the table. The plates clattered along the surface, clinking echoes to accompany the harsh, almost vicious thump.

Wilbur flinches back, and so does Phil. Techno doesn’t. It’s jarring and sudden, though weaker than what Techno would have done for intimidation. But there’s a tremble to Tommy’s breath, and some reignited flare in his eyes.

“Fuck you, Wilbur,” he snarls. Techno blinks, seeing the tiny crystals wobble at the edge of Tommy’s eyes as he shakingly stands up. “I fucking hate you. I fucking hate you so much, and you still don’t care at all, do you? Even after Phil - Phil worked so hard to get us here and with everything and you still do fucking nothing like the shitty, _cowardly bitch_ you are.”

He twists around and flings back the wooden plank, snatching a nearby lantern in the process with such a ferocity Techno thinks for a moment it might break. 

“I’m going down,” he snarls, and his eyes linger on Wilbur’s pale, shocked face a moment longer. “If you want to die in a fucking ditch somewhere so much then _fine._ Sit on your ass and do nothing-”

“He has helped a lot,” Phil tries, before quickly falling quiet at Tommy’s next yell.

“Oh no, no he _hasn’t,_ Phil, not really, not how it matters. _Not at all._ ” Tommy’s words are ragged, and sharp and pained, the product of months resentment and shadowed fears directed into a _weapon._ “All he knows now is _L’Manberg_ this and _I’m so sad_ that and he doesn’t _think_ about us, or the consequences, or the future at all! So _fine,_ let him keep talking or thinking about his stupid, precious symphony, because I’m _done._ I’m not dealing with shit this any fucking longer.”

With that, Tommy whips back around and practically shoves himself into the hole. Techno is almost impressed by the speed at which he falls down. Crunching, sliding gravel echoes in his wake, slowly becoming fainter and fainter.

They’re quiet, for the next few seconds. Techno reaches out and places a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder for just long enough to feel the warmth through the linen shirt. 

Then, he grabs his pickaxe and sword, and stands up. 

“Someone needs to make sure Tommy doesn’t get himself killed,” he tells Phil, before grabbing a nearby lantern and matchbox. Phil nods silently before facing Wilbur again.

As he carefully lowers himself into the hole, dimly mapping the dimensions for a rope ladder at the back of his mind, Techno takes a deep breath. He tries to slow the racing of his heart, an anomaly he can’t afford to get hung over right now.

Phil doesn’t go after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still very busy but here, have a shorter chapter. Was supposed to have another scene but it’s different enough that I’ve decided I can justify placing it in the next chapter instead. As always, no pressure but feedback appreciated!!


	9. within the ice there are cracks to be traced

The walls of the ravine are cold and wavy gray and twisting with shadows from every perspective. Jagged lines and grainy surfaces that leave a primal, shivering feeling seeping through Tommy as he trails the depths of this institution. His mind opened bare to an erratic melody.

He doesn’t turn back once as he pushes forward into the unknown, clutching almost painfully onto his lantern’s wire handle, shutting his senses from the scene behind him, head spinning around and _forward, forward, forward._

Space, quiet, _away_ \- Tommy stifles a gasp as he abruptly hits a wall of musty softness. His fingers come away with bits of dirt and green. 

Moss and mushrooms and the occasional tiny weed, crawled all over the towering walls around him. A dead end.

_Don’t look, don’t hear, don’t think about what’s back behind you-_

He fails. Wilbur’s gaping mouth and wide, blank eyes stare into his mind. 

But Tommy doesn’t care, shouldn’t care, should be able to let go so easily, he had hurt Tommy so much, _why wasn’t this working-_

He grips the lantern handle even tighter, until it was slicing into his palms. His hands shake and tiny whines of scraping metal shake along with him in a mocking tempo.

The light flashes higher for just a moment, flaring his shadow into rippling plumes on the stone. And in that moment, Tommy sees a towering blackness creep forward even as the light subsides again.

“Go away,” he chokes out, and the blackness stops moving. He wipes his eyes with a fluffy sleeve, the wool a moment of gentle respite. 

“And what are you planning to do?” Techno asks. There’s a rumble to his voice Tommy hasn’t heard since Pogtopia.

Well, it is fitting. Another cruel joke by the universe, he can pretend, but Tommy has long since given up on ideas of fate or destiny. 

The thought solidifies his resolve enough to drag himself around. Techno peers down at him, crimson eyes with the faintest hint of glow. His long pink hair is loose and sprawled, littered with tangles and clumps of gravel that wasn’t there before.

“I’m not Wilbur, if that’s what you think,” Tommy growls. “Not gonna off myself like a fucking idiot.”

“Alright.”

“Great. Now leave me alone.”

Techno tilts his head and takes a step forward. Tommy stands his ground and stares him in the eyes. 

“Are you sure about that?” Techno asks. He unslings a pickaxe from his back and tilts the handle toward him. 

Tommy stares for a few moments longer. 

He still feels cold, but it’s a different kind of cold now. The kind that he experiences when he first steps outside into fresh snowfall, that flushes his cheeks a dusty pink and makes his body want to move, to heat up and feel _alive_. 

Tommy takes the pickaxe. 

“No,” he admits. 

~*~

“Tommy-” Wilbur falls silent as Techno disappears from sight.

Phil slowly sits him down on a bed and wraps a cold, rattling wing around him. 

“Wil,” he says. Wilbur doesn’t respond.

Phil closes his eyes. Tommy has a point, even if he didn’t voice it the way he should have. 

He’s starting to see a trend with that, and the pool of guilt overflows again. Perhaps if he’d spent more time, more patience, more support and understanding-

It’s always too late to go back to what ifs. He has to work with what he has now. 

“Wilbur, look at me,” Phil says, and when Wilbur doesn’t respond again he reaches out and tilts his head to meet his eyes.

Wilbur suddenly flinches, a bit of gray dispersing within the film. 

Oh. This is worse than he thought. 

Phil takes a deep breath. _Start simple._

“How many fingers am I holding up?” he asks.

“F-four.”

“Now?”

“Seven.” 

Phil nods. He leans closer and runs a cold hand through Wilbur’s soft, fluffy hair.

“Focus on the present, Wilbur,” he says. He combs through Wilbur’s hair again, just a bit tighter this time. 

“Where are you?” 

“In… a cabin.”

“And?” 

Wilbur leans further against Phil, taking a shuddering breath. Phil picks at the beginning of a braid. 

“Novixl, the continent.”

“And where are we not at?”

Wilbur bits his lip. He’s still perceptive, when he’s focusing. He knows what answer Phil is looking for. There’s relief in that thought, that Phil clings to desperately even as he knots and knots again.

“Around traitors,” Wilbur finally says.

Phil closes his eyes. 

“Wilbur.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me, Wilbur.”

“Sure.” The response is slow and delayed. Phil’s fingers twist a little faster, sliding and looping.

“Wilbur.”

“I’m sorry.”

Phil sighs, and tightens his pull for just a final tiny moment before letting go of Wilbur’s hair. He suppresses a shiver. 

“Do you want to go back to L’Manberg?”

Wilbur looks away.

“Wilbur, please answer me. Just try.”

“Not - Not L’Manberg,” he says. “Somewhere. I don’t know.”

“You-”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Wilbur says.

“But-”

“Please. Stop it.”

Phil takes a deep breath and pulls him closer. His son feels so, so cold, a statue of ice against his arms. It’s frightening, the kind of lurking terror that plagues him through every moment of sleep and waking awareness. 

“Okay. But stay with me.”

Wilbur doesn’t respond. Phil hugs him, and doesn’t know what more to say, and knows he can’t take any of it as agreement. 

His hands are freezing. He hopes Wilbur doesn’t notice. He hopes he does. He‘s not sure which would be worse. 

~*~

“So, what exactly were you planning to do down here with no pickaxe and a single lantern?” Techno asks as he chips away the stone. It’s like his shoveling, preciseness and perfection with every movement. 

“None of your business,” Tommy says. His right hand jolts in pain again, and he pauses briefly before resuming. 

Unfortunately, nothing gets past the _great_ and _mighty_ Technoblade, so Tommy is abruptly grabbed by the wrist before he can swing his pickaxe again. 

“That’s the second time,” Techno says. “Show me your hand.”

Tommy scowls, but turns his hand over. A dotty splotch of red covers his plan, mostly dark and crusty save for the line of fresh new blood that glints in nearby lantern light.

“Tommy.”

“I can handle it,” Tommy says.

“You told me you weren't like Wilbur,” Techno says, brows furrowing. His voice twists towards the end, the way Tubbo’s did whenever Tommy broke or set fire to something he wasn’t supposed to. 

“I’m not,” Tommy protests, because he _isn’t_. He’s just not a coward. “It’s not like it’ll kill me or something.”

“Infection.”

“We have gapples and potions.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Techno says, and suddenly there’s a vial of bright pink liquid in his other hand. He uncorks it with his thumb. 

“Stay still.”

Tommy rolls his eyes, but compiles. 

To his dismay, he winces slightly as Techno wipes the blood away with a gloved finger. A few drops of the healing potion is quickly dripped, and Tommy watches slowly as his skin knits itself back together.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Techno asks. 

Tommy picks up his pickaxe and begins swinging again. 

“Tommy.”

“Didn’t want to bother anyone,” he mutters. “Already said, not like I was gonna die from it or some stupid shit like that.”

Really, isn’t Techno supposed to be the tough one here? Yet he freaks out over injuries - especially Tommy’s - to a ridiculous degree. Maybe it’s all part of that mindset of feverish paranoia he always applies to everything.

Techno places a hand on his shoulder, and Tommy turns back to him. 

“You need to tell us about things like this, or at least treat it yourself,” he says flatly. “That wasn't just a tiny cut, Tommy - if you were attacked you wouldn’t have been able to hold your sword properly. And wounds usually get worse the longer you leave it untreated.”

“You think I don’t fucking know that?” Tommy snaps, waving a hand at the stone walls around them. They’re whispering again - but at least it’s now to the both of them. To his satisfaction, Techno recoils back just the slightest bit. 

They're both silent for a few minutes, Techno resuming his mining alongside Tommy. They had picked a tight area of the ravine and decided to widen it for more convenient travel, as well as gathering the coal and veins of iron inside it.

"Just because you don't have a big problem, doesn't mean it's not worth addressing," Techno says finally. "Especially to-"

"Not this again," Tommy grumbles, but Techno's frown smothers any further comments.

"Tommy," Techno says. "What do you want?"

"What kind of question is that?"

Is Techno diving into one of his weird tangents on characters and development and themes again? Tommy isn't sure if that would be worse than a lecture. At least with the lecture, he could argue back with actual fucking points he understands. 

"Think about it," Techno says. "Preferably right now."

"You're such a dick."

But Tommy indulges him. So what does he want?

His discs are the obvious answer, but no - he's not getting either of the two original ones back, Dream and Tubbo both being so far out of reach. It's stupid to try and he knows. And deep down, Tommy is deeply, deeply relieved at the fact. 

So much struggle has been poured into those discs - struggle that Dream has dangled over his head like carrots and sticks, honeyed words and veiled threats at every turn. In a way, Tommy feels almost triumphant, that he can detach himself from the discs at all, that he has come this far. That he has accepted Phil's replacements.

It's like he let them go along with Tubbo.

...Tubbo. Mr. President of L'Manberg. 

In an ideal world, Dream would never have declared war on L’Manberg. They would have gotten independence peacefully, and Wilbur would be a good president while Tommy and Tubbo helped alongside him. Maybe Techno or Phil would visit, stay a while, and Phil would finally tell his other sons how proud he is of them instead of always fawning over Techno-

Tommy slams that train of thought down with gritted teeth. The world is far from ideal, and at least Phil _is_ paying more attention now. Even if it might be too late.

But Tommy has clawed and clawed for everything, for every inch of ground only for everyone else to snatch it all back at the first opportunity.

“You know, L’Manberg not being blown up sounds great,” Tommy says, giving Techno a glare. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Techno shrugs. “I don’t know why all of you are still so surprised. I _said_ I was out to destroy governments.”

And no one could do anything about it as Techno had spawned those withers. They had all yelled, had all begged, but they could _do_ anything, so paralyzed by the threat of blood and violence.

“Wish everyone would treat me like that,” Tommy says, though he doubts he means it. At least, not literally.

He waves away a cloud of gray dust and slams his pickaxe down a little harder than usual. 

Tommy admires Techno, _envies_ him in some twisting way that persists even after the withers on the 16th, He’s never questioned just _why_ he wants to be like Techno so much, be in a position of his where terror is struck into the hearts of all those who meet him save for his closest family and most dangerous rivals.

Tommy, contrary to what some might believe, clings to people like a lifeline, because they _are_ a lifeline, and lives in constant terror of being abandoned. Techno’s not the opposite - he’s surprisingly similar in his fears, but unlike Tommy no one ever uses it against him. It seems that no one can use anything against him.

...oh.

When he decided he didn’t want to go after his discs anymore, had looked at the two shiny new replacements Phil presented him and accepted - Tommy had felt terrible, yes, and scared, and guilty and frustrated - he had also felt an immense satisfaction that seemed so wrong and yet so right. Because _he_ had made the decision, all for himself, and no one else could have stopped him. 

The biggest source of control over Tommy, over _L’Manberg,_ really, gone in an instant with a simple shrug. Just like that. 

“I want - I want control,” Tommy whispers, and he stops.

Techno raises an eyebrow in the dim light. 

“Do I need to worry about another Dream?” he asks, and Tommy shoves him into a wall. 

“Oh, shut up,” he says. “I want - I want to kick fuckers like Dream in the face and not - I don’t know, have my home burned down for it.”

Techno stifles another giggle, to Tommy’s annoyance, but straightens himself up and looks down into his eyes again.

“True,” he says. “You’ve always been the dog around the server. Running after someone else and following their orders, even if you try to pretend otherwise. Those discs mattered a lot, huh?”

“Sure, whatever,” Tommy says, ignoring the fact that Techno called him a dog. The line of questioning squeezes his stomach uncomfortably, but he tries to brush that off as well. He’s not scared. He can face a little questioning from Techno. He can - he can answer how he wants. What’s Techno going to do, kill his nonexistent pets if he says something he doesn’t like? 

Something like exhilaration rises within Tommy. He begins mining again. Rocks crumble to his feet.

“Hmm. The leash.”

“It’s a leash I bit off with my own fucking teeth, if you love this metaphor so much,” Tommy snaps.

“Well, there’s your first victory,” Techno says, and Tommy blinks.

“Huh?”

“Well, now that you’re no longer attached to the original Cat and Mellohi, they’re essentially useless,” Techno says. “Dream can’t threaten you in that way anymore, and neither can Tubbo.”

“Tubbo wouldn’t-”

“Tubbo’s a president. What if Dream starts threatening L’Manberg again? As long as you were attached to them, those discs had bargaining power,” Techno says. He pauses and blinks, slowly. “Now that you’ve cut ties with those objects, they have one - or two - less things to threaten you with. And you, Tommy, have begun to even the playing field.”

“Is that what it’s about?” Tommy asks, huffing. “Not caring about anything in life?”

Techno snorts. “Even I can’t be bothered to live life that. I mean to cut unnecessary ties, Tommy. Minimize them. Your attachment to those discs were, quite frankly, ridiculous. The rarity of them was only ever contained within the Dream SMP, and they never served much functional purpose.”

Tommy stops.

“So what kind of... _leashes_ do you have?” he asks. “You left Carl and those other horses back in the SMP too, so that can’t be it.”

“Well, it’s not generally not a good idea to let others know your weaknesses or strengths,” Techno says. “But take a wild guess Tommy, I’m sure you can puzzle it out.”

“Your stupid adherance to your no governments thing?” Tommy raises an eyebrow, and thinks that he’s been spending too much time around Techno.

“I’m not taking down governments right now,” Techno says mildly. “In fact, I left that for something else. Someone else. A few someones.”

“...oh.” Tommy pauses. “Wait! You weren’t on our side in the revolution!” 

“You guys weren’t in any real danger then. Or at least, not you. Phil’s not the only one who regrets how Wilbur’s situation was handled.”

It is strange, to hear Techno talk so openly about… relationships. His _emotions_ _._

 _Their_ emotions. It isn’t as nerve wracking or cringy as Tommy thought it would be. 

“So I don’t - this is still confusing,” Tommy says. “I shouldn't-”

“It’s not my job to dictate what you should care about, though a little help with the Wilbur situation would be appreciated,” Techno says. “But you’ve been on the losing side the entire time you’ve been in Dream’s territory. Dream fosters a system of control and power, and by removing yourself from that system itself, you’ve already won by default. The next step is to prepare for any attempts at forcing new systems onto you, or to tackle the next system yourself first with better results.”

“You’re making no sense again.”

“I’m making plenty of sense. You just need to think about it,” Techno says. “Dream with that disc means you had a leash on a collar, but it also means he had the handle. So get yourself some handles, and preferably ones with tougher leashes.”

“Get my own handles,” Tommy muses. “I think I’m already starting to.”

“You are,” Techno agrees. “But you need to do it better. Some handles are not worth their price. And some are not handles at all, though they may seem like so at first.”

Tommy looks down.

“You mean what I said to Wilbur,” he says.

“Yes.”

“He deserves it.”

“Do you care about him, Tommy?” 

Tommy stays silent.

“Tommy. Answer me, this is important. _Do you care about Wilbur?”_

Techno grabs his wrist, eyes narrowed. There’s a tightness to his shoulders that wasn’t there before.

Tommy forces himself to continue maintaining eye contact. He won’t give up, he can’t.

“Y - yes,” he mutters. Because despite everything, Wilbur is still his brother, and he had still played a crucial part in raising him.

Tommy misses Wilbur. He wants his brother back - who he used to be, the Wilbur who cheerily sang campfire songs and laughed like the wild wind, and not this pathetic excuse of a ghost that is his current existence. He’s alive, and he doesn’t deserve the privilege of running away from all his problems like a ghost.

“Show it,” Techno says, and lets him go. Tommy slowly leans back. 

“...I’m sorry about Wilbur too.”

“We all are. And we need to apologize, including him.” Techno runs a hand through his hair, and frowns. “Things can get better, if we try. And in the right ways.”

“Very fucking helpful.”

“I know.”

“So I should be more... _patient_ with Wilbur.”

“And help him be more patient with himself,” Techno says. “You had the right idea, just - don’t tell him to die in a ditch next time. You know how that can go.”

Tommy takes a deep breath. A thundering boom racks his mind and jagged rubble falls around him, but the vision goes just as quickly as it comes.

“I’ll try,” he says. “Fuck the green bitch and his stupid fucking system, right?”

“Right,” Techno grins. “You’re learning.”

~*~

_Entry 12_

_Tommy told me to die today. He also apologized afterwards. He looked sorry. I think he means it, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?_

_I feel really cold. I’ve felt cold since… I don’t remember. Maybe since the election. Maybe before. Maybe I was never warm in the first place. But I feel colder than usual today, and it scares me. I don’t know what to do. It makes me angry. And scared._

_Do I have the right to feel angry after all this? Why am I angry? Who am I angry at? Everyone, maybe. They all took so much from me. Except Techno or Tommy. Or Phil. Well, maybe Phil. I was supposed to die in L’Manberg and Phil took that away and didn’t let me have it back._

_I never got L’Manberg back either. I was supposed to win either way and I didn’t. The plan was foolproof in its design - and yet they found a way to penetrate the impenetrable. They ripped it all out by the seams and flew off with its carcass._

_Oh, the irony. I’m dead and yet not dead. What does Phil think he can do with a glorified meat sack?_

_I tried singing again, today. When we were shoveling snow and everyone else was far away enough. My voice doesn’t sound the same, it’s so raw and dull and quiet and I hate it. No one likes it when a defeated madman tries to be funny. I tried to write a new song to fit the mood, and that didn’t work out either. To draggy. I can’t hit the notes the way I want. I can’t get away from using something other than an A minor triad. I’m stuck and stuck and can’t move away._

_Another sign I've reached my peak, I suppose. Nowhere to go but down._

_Tommy’s right. I can’t do much of anything that really matters and I can’t bring myself to do anything about that either. I was supposed to - to lead and talk and sing and - entertain, I guess. What else do I do? I can’t fight like Techno or survive like Phil or - or even persist like Tommy. He’s always been the stronger one between the two of us, full of more resolve than I’ll ever be able to scrounge up. So many others would have broken under the weight of everything he’s endured. Including me._

_Who knows, at least history got another failed dictator. Maybe students will laugh over my story one day. They’ll also want a conclusion to it. I want a conclusion too._

_Allegiances are such fickle things. Eret was on our side for real in the beginning. I can tell - or could tell, but the memory still remains. It's one of the ones that hurt the most. One of the few abilities I had, though that deteriorated with the passage of time as well._

_Schlatt - we were friends, once. He was such a good actor, before the whole alcoholism spiral. The drunkenness really brought out his true colors. I wish I could have done that too, but Techno kept blocking my attempts. Said it was too dangerous. Cited flammability concerns._

_All lies, of course, but was I about to fight him? No. I regret that now. Should have tried harder. A heart attack would have spared Phil so much pain._

_I didn’t think to pay close attention to Schlatt when he came around again, promising to endorse us. I was probably already going insane then. The war for independence already sapped so much out of me. We were still under Dream’s shadow. L’Manberg still, is, probably. That’s why it’s better as a crater. As long as it’s under the control of someone else it’s not_ mine.

_Can I really blame Eret? He was only ever doing what made sense for his survival. He got kingship and luxury for it. Maybe the rest of us should have taken a page from his book._

_Isn’t that just depressing? The world is one where traitors win and loyalty loses. That’s why there’s traitors everywhere. That’s why it's in Phil, Techno, and Tommy’s best interests to just get rid of me. Maybe Phil will finally realize that bird parents commit to their strongest chicks, leaving the weakest to die. Maybe Techno will finally apply that strategic logic he’s so famous for. Maybe Tommy will finally give me what I deserve, after fully comprehending everything I have taken away from him._

_After all, I’ve proven myself to be the ultimate traitor._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha canon parallels go brr
> 
> And I made a tumblr: <https://lnterjection.tumblr.com/>
> 
> Comments are always appreciated, and I try my best to answer them all. But if for whatever reason you feel like talking to me more or just want to say something in a place that’s not the Ao3 comment box, tumblr’s the place! Hopefully! I’m still trying to figure out how it works. And sometimes I’ll post chapter progress updates there! More convenient than editing my profile all the time like I used to do. 
> 
> Anyway sorry for the large gap between updates, finals came around and I got very distracted. But I should be back on track with a better update schedule now!


	10. lay siege to tear our cities down

Techno observes the rise and fall of Wilbur’s chest, and finds so much irregularity it might as well be the constant.

Well, at the very least, he is sleeping. At some point during the exile Wilbur’s insomnia crossed the severity of even Techno’s, trudging through his crazed consciousness with a persistence only the truly deranged could channel. 

He had been writing in that journal, bound and pale yellow, before falling asleep, the fast scritches of a matted black quill stabbing into the silence between them. 

That’s good. Or at least, it should be, but Techno knows better than to pry through such a personal matter to confirm. 

The last thing Wilbur needs is more breaches of trust. 

He supposes he can say the same for himself. There are so many things left undiscussed deep in the ravine with Tommy, simmering below the surface of those dull lantern lights. Of hurt and beliefs and betrayals. 

Peer pressure is not, will never be, a valid excuse for why he killed Tubbo, and Techno has always known this. He had panicked, had felt the eyes of thousands stare into him, had felt that familiar, insurmountable urge for  _ blood. _

It was just another child, he had reasoned, and he’d done so much worse before. Tubbo wasn’t even on his last life and the pressure was so  _ overwhelming,  _ the way it seeped through his ribs to choke his lungs and form a ball of thorny vines his throat against Schlatt’s demands, a sentence he could not bring himself to fight and ignore.

Well, Techno is not a good person and he has never fancied himself to be one. He hadn’t really known Tubbo then, had underestimated how much Tommy cared for him. It is one of two regrets he carried with him from the war.

Tommy, however, Tommy had no reason to be shocked by the withers. After everything - so much emphasizing, so much clearness and communication on Techno’s intentions-

But no, Tommy will learn, Tommy  _ has _ learned already. He has severed several leashes and Techno sees, in those flickering, bright eyes, that he has plans to sever more. He’s stronger, willing to amass the rubbles of his past and build himself up a more armored future. To match, and then overshadow, the once looming and seemingly insurmountable adversaries of his trauma. 

Tommy has the potential to be great one day. Techno will give credit where it is due. 

But right now, he is still so delicate. A child wrung through war, and not one who is born for it. 

With how pressing Wilbur and Tommy’s situations are, Techno’s own can hold out for now. Indefinitely, if he needs it to, if it might threaten the peace and stability of this patchwork family. He’s tired of mending wounds. He’s tired of fighting wars. 

Again, he eyes Wilbur carefully, but despite the tumultuous nights he has never felt him leave, or try anything. Techno’s stakeouts have caught nothing either. 

The single light of the attic is a tiny lantern Techno has yet to blow out and slide away on a shelf. The light flickers shadows across Wilbur’s back, catches streaks of brilliant gold in his soft, wavy hair. 

Phil must have untangled and brushed some of it out, painstakingly unwound and rewound all the strands. Restored some form of love and care into Wilbur’s life in the ways he knows how. In the ways Wilbur once missed, though then again, what does Techno know of such matters?

He wonders how long it’ll take Wilbur to notice. 

~*~

The next day they wake to a sparkling white world and soft, nipping breezes. After breakfast, Phil ushers everyone outside for more building. 

The ravine can wait, he thinks, and wonders how long it will take to overcome that hurdle. 

Wilbur announces his intention to gather more wood, and Techno promptly announces his intention to go with him. The former barely acknowledges the words, grabbing an axe and whisking himself off, leaving Techno to frown and trail after him with a line of printed snow. 

Meanwhile, Phil and Tommy tie up some loose ends. 

A priority is a better shelter for their horses. Before, they had been housed in a small cave, a dingy space indented into a rocky outcropping nearby, but over the past few days he and Tommy had been working on connecting a smaller building to the entrance for more room and shelter against the climate. 

They finish the final wall today, hammering in the last few planks and Phil fiddling with another, much larger door. The horses are a few paces behind, pawing away the grainy snow to munch on stiff, blue-tinged grass. 

“So what did you and Techno talk about down there?” Phil asks as he carefully screws the hinges into place. He’s given a humming noise in response.

“Tommy.”

“Random shit,” Tommy says. “Not about you - well, not much about you, if you were wondering. Told me to be nicer to Wilbur. Something about power and stuff.”

“Power and stuff,” Phil echoes, and he knows he should trust Techno, but the reality is that  _ none _ of them are of particularly sound mind. It’s something he frets over, day and night, because he has no idea how to handle any of it and he always feels so  _ lost _ in the face of such problems. 

“Told him I want to… gain more control, I guess,” Tommy shrugs. “It wasn’t that fucking complicated.”

Phil takes a step away and swings the door back and forth, feeling the scratchy fluidity of the motions. Good enough, he decides. 

“You told that to Techno, and the response wasn’t complicated?” he asks, some incredulousness seeping through. 

“Well - he was all cryptic and shit like usual but I think I got it. Like, we talked about the discs and me letting them go, about - Techno went on this weird metaphor about leashes and handles and stuff. And then - well, I guess I have to get over Tubbo too. Not forever! Just… for now.”

“I know you still miss him,” Phil says, and Tommy rolls his eyes.

“No shit, Phil. Tubbo was my best friend. He - you remember, he was there for me a lot before we left for the Dream SMP.” There’s a bitter edge to his tone, the voice of longing for what once was. 

Phil does remember, but he was not particularly involved in Tommy’s friendships either. Tubbo had been Niki’s brother, though he is never quite sure whether he was adopted or not, showing up with her a few years before Wilbur and Tommy left the house. Tommy’s ramblings about his activities, at that point, were often tuned out by Phil - by them all, after a long day of working on something or another. 

It’s just another thing he regrets, focusing so much on personal projects while still hoping to properly take care of three children. Phil has been - still is - so naive in all the ways they can break. 

“Did Techno advise you to let go of him too?” Phil asks.

“No,” Tommy shrugs. “I’m not a part of L’Manberg anymore, and I’m not going back to fucking reconnect or whatever, but it doesn’t mean I never want to see him again. We’re - we can figure something out. Eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“Once Wilbur…” Tommy makes a face, and twists his hand around in a vague gesture. “You know. Stops thinking about traitors all the time. And we get our shit together.”

Something in Phil warms against the coldness around him, at that. Tommy’s - Tommy’s learning, alright. The circumstances are less than ideal, but he’s  _ learning _ and though he may not know it now that is one less leash on him and one more handle in his arsenal. 

“That’s the spirit,” Phil says, nodding. Tommy’s cheeks puff up a bit, pale pink against the cold. “Still vague on details about Techno, though. I know he can be a bit much, and I - well, I know what happened with the festival.”

Tommy looks down, and then back up, reaching out to pat his horse’s dusty gray head. 

“It’s fine. All fine and shit. Fine as it fucking can be, I guess. Call it a brotherly bonding moment if it helps,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Phil sighs.

“That’s what I thought with this whole L’Manberg business too,” he says. “And look how that turned out.”

Tommy’s eyes widen at that, and there’s a faint crunch as he takes a step forward.

“You - but…”

He’s not a good father, Phil knows, and he’s come to terms with that, but his sons need all the support they can get right now and he  _ wants _ to be better and he’s trying and - it has to be enough, right?

Phil leans closer and sweeps Tommy into a tight hug. There's a muffled “urk!” and some squirming as his wings close around him, but Tommy quickly relaxes into the grip with a contented huff.

“Look, if you really think it’s no problem, then tell me, okay?” Phil says. “But I wasn’t there for you guys for so long and I don’t plan on making that mistake again.”

His breath swirls the air above Tommy in hazy pirouettes. He’d forgotten, back then, how fragile children are. How fragile anyone’s mind can be, left alone in an unforgiving world. Phil is a creature born to isolation, to the freezing skies and desolate peaks, but his sons are not.

“Oh,” Tommy eventually says, and Phil slowly loosens his grip. “Sure. Okay.”

Phil gives him a tiny smile, and they get back to work. There’s still a house to build.

~*~

Chopping trees is a monotonous, mindless task, and where Wilbur once detested such work he now finds solace in its vacuity. It’s a retreat, a cove of emptiness where he can shield himself behind mirrors and smoke for the inordinate stretches of time he’s gone.

In the steady  _ thunking _ of wood, in the spits of flying bark that slice his cheeks and showerings of shriveled leaves that crown his hair, he can detach for as long as his body still has energy left to move, and afterwards.

Techno is none the wiser, so busy he is in pursuit of efficiency, and absorbed in wariness of their wider, wilder surroundings. 

Of course, Wilbur is practically nothing now, empty oceans and cracked glass eyes. Nothing of note, or worth paying attention to, so Techno ultimately has the right idea. It’s freeing in a way, another tether loosened.

His mind hums in the nothingness, old and listless tunes that will never complete themselves, doomed to waste away in a broken, static memory. Wilbur has long since given up on their resolutions.

The songs in his memories are ones with endings like hanged men, strangled in final moments of gasping, twisting agony, cut off with a sudden, lurching limpness. No grand deaths for those traitors, only wasted, one-note glances. Perhaps that’s why the path set is not the path taken. Perhaps he doesn’t deserve even that.

His eyes close somewhere along the mist, and his hands are moving, chopping, repeating static and-

_ 1  _ and  _ 2  _ and _ 3  _ and _ 4  _ and  _ 1  _ and  _ 2  _ and _ 3  _ and _ 4  _ and _ 1  _ and  _ 2  _ and _ 3  _ and _ 4  _ and _ 1  _ and  _ 2  _ and _ 3  _ and _ 4  _ and _ 1  _ and  _ 2  _ and _ 3  _ and _ 4  _ and...

Eventually, the drifting mist parts in the form of Techno’s hands digging into his shoulder. Wilbur lets himself be guided along, content to let the notes hit where they may. They’ve taken a lower path now, for some reason.

“-help split the logs…”

Wilbur blinks, and Phil is gesturing in front of him, Tommy and Techno nodding. Are they working on the larger house now? 

The sun is just past the midway point, Wilbur notes. The sky is clear. Smooth winds and the whistling tweets of songbirds. A brown one with a spotted black underbelly slowly flutters by behind Phil with the faintest sound of beating, shuddering clatters. Silken feathers splayed out at unnatural angles. A broken wing, maybe.

“I can do that,” Wilbur says. “Split the logs.”

“No need-”

“We can handle it-”

Techno coughs, glancing at Phil.

“Why don’t you clear out more snow?” Phil says to Wilbur, and gets a nod back in response. 

He blinks, and there’s a shovel in his hands. 

As he shovels, he’s aware often enough to catch the nervous, monitoring glances they all constantly throw his way. He knows the fear in their voices and the guarded way they prowl around him, waiting for a simple mishap.

They could get more done if they aren’t like this, the thought surfaces slowly in the haze. They could be happier. Less paranoid with their weak link gone.

Wilbur supposes he has always been the weak link. To everything, really, a fiery tumble of utopian ideals and grandiose speeches, gold flakes on rotten wood, doomed to smash down in blazing disaster. 

From the wreckage of that disaster limps forth a pitiful, pathetic creature. 

He’s a beacon of coldness now. Spring is coming. He dreads the melt, and welcomes it all the same. 

~*~

“Phil, where are the elytras?” Tommy asks, and Phil looks up from his map. The fireplace light gives his wings waves of glinting shimmers as he stretches them out. Outside the fenced and lit area around the cabin, the forest is crawling with monsters. 

“Somewhere in my ender chest,” he says, gathering blankets up around him. Tommy closes his heavy eyelids as well, grasping his pillow in his hands. “Why are you asking?”

“Flying,” Tommy shrugs. “Gliding. Whatever the fuck it’s called. Feel like trying it again.”

“Oh. Sure.” Phil stares at him for a few silent moments before collapsing his map, slowly smoothing every crease and tucking every fold before sliding it into an invisible nook in his ender chest. The lid closes with a  _ click. _ “I think I still have some rockets too. Why the sudden decision?”

_ “So get yourself some handles, Tommy _ .”

_ Explosions. Explosions, and whistling, and cackling, and the blasting rush of air as Tubbo’s scarred body collapses in front of him. _

Tommy takes a deep breath and lays down on the bed. He pulls the blankets up, furs of wavy russet brown. Soft wool tickles his lips as he shifts the pillow beneath his head. 

It’s warm, the cabin bathed in the heat of the fire. The blankets are soft and his family is close and Tommy feels… safe, or safer than he has in a long, long time. Comforted, maybe .

“I wanna taste some freedom, you know?” he says with a grin, and Phil makes a hum of acknowledgement. 

Tommy snorts at that, and allows the darkness of sleep to softly carry him off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not particularly satisfied with how this one went but I have a feeling I’d be poking at it forever if I let myself so uhh here have a chapter. As always, feedback of any kind is appreciated!


	11. those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither

“Techno,” Tommy says. “I found some shit.”

“Gonna have to be more specific, Tommy,” Techno says, but Tommy hears him step closer anyway, boots clicking softly across cracked stone. His own shadow folds smaller and smaller into itself, and he takes a step to the side with a passing chill and subsequent shrug.

Tommy points at a crack between the walls as Techno reaches him. The ravine is mostly lit up now, lanterns and torch holders placed around the corners, redstone lamps from the few bits of the powder they have found so far. (Phil had said something about it forming more frequently at lower levels, though Tommy had been too busy daydreaming about bees to remember for sure). 

Everlasting light sources are a convenience Tommy has forgotten the utility of, back during his time in the Dream SMP. Coal lasts a while, of course, but when possible torches and lanterns hold glowstone and not fire. 

The Nether, however, is not a place any of them want to breach quite yet.

The crack itself is pitch dark, a gash between an arching wall of the ravine, and just barely large enough for Tommy to slip through some effort. The telltale sound of flowing water trickles from the space. 

“So that’s the water source Phil mentioned,” Techno says, and at that moment a groan echoes from the space as well.

Tommy wrinkles his nose again in disgust. Zombies, always appearing in the most inopportune moments possible.

He readies his sword, only for Techno to catch his wrist. Tommy tries not to flinch, and manages an internal half-hearted cheer when he just barely manages to keep his movement steady.

“What are you doing?” Techno asks. Tommy frowns.

“Going in to light up the place?” he says. “What, are we supposed to just give up on a water source?”

“Let me go first,” Techno says.

Tommy’s frown deepens. He glances from Techno, to the crack, and back again, and yeah, there is _no_ fucking way his 7 foot brother with a thick blue cape is fitting through that space.

Techno blinks at him, head tilting in that peculiar way of his when Tommy doesn’t move.

“Is there a problem?” he asks, as though he’s asking of the weather.

“You’re fitting through that?” Tommy asks. “Since when did you get the ability to magically shrink yourself?”

“What - you think I’m squeezing through that?” Techno laughs, low and amused, and seems to laugh harder at Tommy’s confused expression. 

“Oh, shut up!” Tommy huffs, and pushes him again. “Just tell me already! I’m missing some stupid shit, aren’t I?”

He waits for that familiar bile of resentment to pool up, but Techno smiles down at him in a way that’s intrigued and _patient_ and Tommy’s surprised to find nothing but that same constant warmth burning inside of him. 

Well, something to contemplate another time.

He really has been spending too much time around Techno.

“Watch and learn, Tommy,” Techno says, and swings out his pickaxe.

Tommy has a frozen moment to think _oh, shit,_ before the netherite tip smashes through the top of the crack and lengthens it by at least half a foot. Techno takes a moment to flash grinning teeth at him before continuing his onslaught. 

Eventually, there’s a gap between the walls that’s twice as big as it used to be and Techno’s sword is flashing. With a smooth arc it sails across the air, impales the incoming zombie right through the head, _and comes out the other side_ with an echoing clatter that rings a bit too long in Tommy’s ears.

They both stand there for a minute, taking in the darkness. Tommy’s lantern barely illuminates the zombie’s rotting feet, twisted green skin and the glint of jutting bone. 

“Show off,” Tommy eventually says, and Techno snorts. 

“Technoblade never dies.”

“I wanna try that next time.”

Techno raises an eyebrow and nods. They turn back to the space. 

As Techno moves to retrieve his sword, light pours into the darkness, and their suspicions are confirmed. 

It’s a tiny cavern, a single stream taking up most of the space. The zombie’s head just barely dips into the waters and Tommy kicks it away with a wince.

“So, fresh water,” Tommy says.

“Hopefully,” Techno says. He kneels down at the cold, rocky edge, lined with spots of moss and algae, and cups his hands into the stream.

“Are you - why are you drinking the water?” Tommy asks. 

Techno gives him a look of mild disbelief at the question and gulps the liquid down. Shakes darting droplets from his hands. 

“To test if it’s drinkable, duh,” he says. “Can’t always tell by taste, but sometimes there are warning signs.”

“That’s like testing if something is poisoned by eating it.” Tommy says. Techno shrugs.

“Most things don’t poison me, and if you haven’t noticed I don’t ever really get sick,” he says. “Something about piglins and their evolved diets.”

Tommy knows to trust Techno on such matters, but still, he couldn’t deny the flutter of panic that had reared itself when Techno mentioned poison. He wonders if Techno is even aware of such emotions,

“So, is it poisoned?” Tommy asks. 

“Didn’t notice anything off. It’s like really cold water. Tastes like stone.”

“What the fuck does that mean, tastes like stone?” Tommy rolls his eyes.

“If I don’t drop dead sometime anytime soon, then maybe you’ll find out,” Techno says. He looks around, and places a lantern on a nearby rock before taking out and lighting another one. “Doesn’t look like there’s much else in this place.”

Tommy glances between the two ends of the cavern where the water runs from and to unknown destinations, blocked from view by clifflike edges. 

“That’s pretty much the whole ravine explored, isn’t it?” he says.

“Yep,” Techno says. “Could probably get some strip mines going, but we have more than enough exposed iron and coal for now, and that’s the important bit. Should probably build some furnaces soon too.”

Tommy nods, and looks down at the zombie. He feels oddly accomplished, for some reason. 

“We could just toss it in the stream,” Techno says. “Hack it apart if you want to make sure it doesn’t clog anything.”

“You just _drank_ from it-”

“All sorts of disgusting things end up in rivers, Tommy,” Techno shrugs. “Where do you think lots of dead bodies end up? That’s why you should drink from the upstream when you can, and zombie flesh isn’t even that bad of a food source. Pretty sure humans have evolved to tolerate it.”

“You’re impossible,” Tommy says, but eventually they agree that they can’t have a zombie rotting here. Techno cuts all its limbs and Tommy kicks its head clean off, and they watch as pieces get swept away and disappear beneath the stone.

“Well, time to see what Phil’s cooked up for lunch,” Techno says.

“You’re disgusting,” Tommy says, and grins up at him. He can definitely do with some fresh air. 

~*~

After lunch, they all agree to take a break. Techno pulls out his journal and begins writing, while Wilbur hums something on a chair next to him.

“Phil,” Tommy says. “Elytras and shit, remember?”

Phil hesitates, face drawn for the tiniest second before moving to unlatch the ender chest. The shimmering wings and rockets are quickly handed over.

“You’re sure about this, right?” Phil asks. “I know - I should have thought more before having us all fly to the continent. You don’t have to feel pressured to deal with your fears.”

“Someone’s fucking gotta,” Tommy says, and tries not to look at Wilbur. He won’t be like Wilbur right now, he _can’t._ None of them can afford any more stress and Tommy’s determined to not mess it up for once in his life. 

“Well, we can go out and try some maneuvers right now,” Phil says. He nudges Techno, who raises his head from his book. 

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Me and Tommy are going outside to mess with the elytra a bit,” Phil says. “Keep an eye on Wilbur, okay?”

“Tommy and I,” Techno mutters, yawning softly - and then clarity blinks into his eyes and he nods at the request.

“Oh, sure.” 

They all glance at Wilbur, now staring into the wall with his usual blankness. Tommy suppresses another bout of annoyance _and sorrow_ and stands up.

“Let’s go,” he says, and Phil nods with a jerky motion. They all pretend not to see the way he embraces Wilbur just a bit too tightly before opening the door.

~*~

“You were mainly just catching wind currents and using a rocket when you couldn’t,” Phil explains as Tommy spits out a crunching leaf. “But there’s a lot of different turns and maneuvers you can do that’ll make you much harder to catch if you were, say, being chased.”

“My awesomeness would scare them away before any of that happens,” Tommy snorts. “Besides, who’s chasing me into the fucking sky?” 

Phil stifles a laugh, and pats his shoulder.

“Maybe, but just in case,” he says. “Either way, it’s some cool shit. Try again.”

Tommy suppresses a grin and readjusts his position before launching himself off the tree branch.

The world spirals around him and he feels the wings fan out, shoulders pulling taut and every arm muscle straining. This time, he hones in on the whips of brown below. One barely slaps his side and he twists with about as much grace as a flailing duckling to try and not hit anything. Everything blurs into smearing colors and roaring winds.

But he manages not to tangle himself on another branch immediately, wincing as something slices his cheek and he’s falling faster and faster and-

“Spread them further! Glide!”

Phil’s voice cuts through the haze, there’s a flash of black in the corner of his vision and Tommy somehow has the mind to comply, flattening his body and stretching his shoulders - and then he’s slowing down and the world comes into focus.

Tommy’s hair flattens and he tries not to shiver against the biting gales that seem to trace every part of him. A leaf barely brushes his right eye. The whispering forest comes alive in its warping stillness as he glides through its seas of branches and races towards the flecks of pale skyline, the thrill of it all taking his breath away. 

He’s picking up speed again, he realizes, and he angles down to avoid another branch and yelps as a rush of russet brown meets his eyes. His feet slam into a shower of crackling leaves and he collapses down into the earth. 

“Tommy!” Phil calls from somewhere behind him. “You okay?”

“Yeah!” Tommy yells back, taking a few deep breaths. “I’m great! That was fucking amazing!”

A familiar whoosh settles beside him as Phil lands and tucks his wings closed. 

“It’s an experience, alright,” he chuckles. “Nowhere near as much control as actual wings, but the being in the air feels like… well, freedom.”

“Freedom, fuck yeah!” Tommy jumps up and screams the words at the edges of the forest, and where a few paces over the rocky barriers of their crater-like area drops into sheer, scaled cliffs. His lungs are heaving with cold, sharp air and he hasn’t felt so _alive_ in such a long while and it’s _so fucking incredible._

They stand there for a few more moments, taking in their snow swathed world, rugged and swaying and, for the first time in Tommy’s eyes, beautiful. 

Eventually, he shakes the leaves out of his hair. A crunch echoes the forest as he takes a step forward, eyes focused on the spots of blue that peek behind the treeline. The end of the woods, where the rocks meet the sky and the winds blow in racing streams around the clouds. 

He recalls again the rush of adrenaline, the exhilaration of everything in the world laid out around him and how he moves through it all without resistance, as though he was swimming through his most powerful dreams and nothing, _no one_ could catch him, could drag him away and back into the darkness.

He is _definitely_ doing this again. 

~*~

“We should make it easier to get down here,” Techno says. “Mine out some stairs.”

Wilbur merely nods, and holds out a hand. 

Techno hesitates, glancing at his second pickaxe. But his reaction times are good enough, and Wilbur’s hair shines eerily in the lantern light, and surely that has to be enough?

...he really is hopeless with all this, Techno thinks with an internal sigh. He slowly hands the pickaxe forward, and Wilbur takes it at the same crawling pace. 

They get to work, the ravine quickly filling with the distinctly sharp chink of netherite on stone. 

Wilbur seems content to mine and move the materials, loosening gravel and using a shovel to push it against the opposite ravine walls. Techno works by his side, and whereas he would normally bask in the quiet, the shadows of Wilbur’s looming specter chills them further with each moment of silence.

 _For Phil,_ he finally reminds himself. _For Tommy. For Wilbur._

“How are you doing?” he asks, and Wilbur doesn’t respond. Techno’s used to such. Even back in Pogtopia, he was used to such a response. 

He places a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder and shakes. It’s a cue that’s gotten less effective as time drags by, but Techno’s too nervous of consequences to try anything new. Especially right now, with only the two of them. 

“How are you doing?” he asks again, and Wilbur blinks at him with a dusty shovel and half-parted lips.

“Fine,” Wilbur finally says, looking down. 

“Look at me, Wilbur,” Techno says, trawling through his memories to grasp Phil’s example. “Look at me, and tell me how you’re doing.”

“...not fine,” is the next response.

“And?” 

“I - I don’t know.” 

Techno takes a deep breath. He feels like throwing his pickaxe into the ground and stalks off to anywhere else. Anywhere but here, where he’s forced to confront his worst mistakes and most terrifying nightmares come true.

Where the light is dim and the shadows always concealing, where there is nothing between him and the truth he’s so afraid of and every avenue of escape is towered by cold, unforgiving stone. He’s braved Tommy, but he is not sure he can brave Wilbur. Not like this. Nothing like this, cold as the void and just as repellingly possessive. 

“Please,” Techno whispers, and Wilbur closes his eyes. “You can’t hide from everything forever.”

“What else is there to do?” Wilbur asks, voice like dripping acid. Techno winces.

“Tommy-”

“I know what I did to Tommy,” Wilbur says. “And yet he’s forced to live with me. He has to pretend I’m still his brother. What kind of justice is that?”

“You _are_ still his brother,” Techno snaps. A surge of thundering fury floods his veins, but it subsides away just as quickly at Wilbur’s impassive stare. 

He doesn’t know what to do. Techno has to face this reality, this reality that he’s been living in for the past month or so. He doesn’t know what to do but he has to do _something._ It’s as simple as that, and Techno hates it. Hates the way he clams up and down and sideways, irregular patterns spiking with every interaction. 

He takes a step forward and grabs Wilbur’s shoulders, jerking his attempt at turning away to a halt.

“You have to face that responsibility, Wilbur.”

“Tommy shouldn’t have to,” he says back. 

“You’re being evasive.” Techno struggles to keep the frustration out of his voice. He can’t lose control, not here. Anywhere but here, with the paper thin glass that is Wilbur’s mental state. 

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

There it is again. It’s Wilbur’s favorite line now, Techno thinks, keeping the resentment from his expression. At least that, he can do - mold a mask of indifference as his face, one as hard and unrevealing as Dream’s. 

Who knows if it still works, though, around Wilbur. So much has changed and he understands so very little of it. Techno is just beginning to understand the scope. 

“You - you can’t hide from this forever, Wilbur,” he manages.

Wilbur hefts his pickaxe and turns back towards the slanted incline that is the entrance to the ravine.

“I want to get this staircase done soon,” he says, and starts mining again. 

It’s cold. Techno thinks of bruises and betrayals, the crackle of fireworks and tingle of embracing shadows, nights of silence and screaming where he has only ever contributed to the cause.

It is Phil, who dragged him away. Tommy, who Wilbur so desperately loved and scorned with that love, and who has to rebuild it again. Techno as well, but Techno is forever the mismeasured piece. Wilbur was light and music, can still be, but Techno has and will always be a blade. 

Why does everything he touches fall to bloody, shattered fragments?

He continues to work next to Wilbur in silence, and doesn’t try to bring the subject of apology up again. 

~*~

Perhaps it’s his destiny to always end everything with a depression that permeates the souls and specters around. Misery that continues to refold itself long after the originator’s death, a self-replicating machine of internal destruction. 

He knows it in Techno’s haunched, defeated shoulders, Phil’s desperate pleas and Tommy’s shadowed yells in the middle of the night. 

Isn’t that just nice?

Might as well take out as much fuel as he can, as soon as he can, but Wilbur is nothing if not a coward and he knows this to be the greatest truth of his life (and existence hereafter).

Techno is alert, but Wilbur is who knows him best. It’s a sad thought, for his brother, but it’s Phil afterwards and he’s beginning to think that Phil may have the better claim anyways now. And to think he was once so proud of it all. 

Either way, his steps are placed just so around the blankets and no one makes a sound. 

The moonlight is softer, shaded with a soundless gaze that does not cast judgement on the beneath, so still and silent in the dead of white winter. The owls are softer too, impossible wingbeats and quick flashes of death. The occasional harmony of a wolf pack howls across the mountains, a family on the chase for food and freedom. 

_Good for them_ , Wilbur thinks. 

The forest edge comes into view, a grayscale that tints darker the more he unfocuses. Beyond him is a sheer drop, cliffs and trees and something like a river, glinting surfaces that snake across the valleys. 

It’s cold, out here. It’s peaceful, out here. All his problems are behind him and the world is in front of him. It’s these moments where he feels freer than he ever had been. His phantom wings want to stretch beneath the ocean and he doesn’t care to remind them that they were clipped and ripped off in scragged, bloodstained warfare a long time ago, in explosions and swords for the weak and foolish. 

His hair is cold and he knows, but he doesn’t dare to care. A storm is brewing in the ocean. To weather it is to sink, to acknowledge it is to drown islands. The world would spin in gray, like it does every night in his nightmares and on every walk along the moonlight’s edge. 

The moon is brighter. Techno will wake up soon. Such is the pattern of the seemingly unpredictable. 

The night is still and the grayscale calls, and Wilbur wonders. He doesn’t answer, however, not tonight, because he is forever the coward and nothing can change it now.

He turns and glides back across the white. He’s used to - well, they’re all used to the cold now, so ironic is this awareness. He tucks a strand of glowing hair back and away, where it belongs. 

The edge of the world, they say of the cliffs, of the boundless skyline. It calls and he knows he will answer again. After all, Wilbur is an addict and the drug is now freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback welcome, as always! What did you think? I try to reply to every one with my thoughts, and I love reading feedback on how I handled issues and what sticks with readers. The plot is slowing down some to explore the character dynamics and relationships more, and hopefully it doesn’t feel too draggy?
> 
> And careful, Wilbur and Tommy. Don’t let the Americans infect you guys lol.
> 
> Also I have come to the conclusion that a beta reader would help a lot. Yeah this hasn’t been beta read and it probably shows, especially in some earlier chapters? (which I plan to clean up on grammar sometime). I mean I proofread but my attention span is short as fuck so I miss quite a few things lol. 
> 
> Anyway I mean this is a bit presumptuous that I would assume anyone reading would want to beta read this but I mean if you’re interested message me on Tumblr or my email’s public if ya wanna use that. Please do not use Ao3’s comment system, I can’t handle a conversation like that being in public. 
> 
> Disclaimers  
> \- I mostly just want another set of eyes to proofread for grammar mistakes, but constructive criticism on other things and suggestions on different wordings and overall story and character stuff are really nice too, and arguably more important to the fic in the long run. 
> 
> \- I am looking for one person for now. I can’t handle any amount of social interaction past that. If you message me I will try to reply with something, but don’t be surprised if I decline. 
> 
> \- Please be able to respond to requests to read over stuff and give feedback relatively quickly. Within like 2 days is fine with me. 
> 
> \- I will likely just end up sharing a Google Docs and suggest using the comment system as the main method of fixing mistakes and suggesting things. I will also likely request Discord as communication. 
> 
> EDIT: I've received more than enough applications, wow I was not expecting the response to be so big. Sorry to anyone just reading this and am interested, but I'm afraid I will have to automatically decline new ones now.


	12. fly fast, fly hard

_Entry 17_

_Went down to the cliffs again tonight. It wasn’t snowing this time. Pity._

_I think I would look good covered in snow._

_Tommy used to love making snowmen when he was younger. Not even snowmen - strange, misshapen creatures. Monstrosities with antlers of twisted silver branches and obsidian flakes for too many eyes. He loved pretending they were real, hugging them like they were a source of comfort._

_I remember being jealous. Wasn’t I a good source of comfort? Wasn’t I a good brother to talk to? Why did he run to snowy pantomimes of storytime horrors instead?_

_Why did he more often run to Techno instead?_

_The implications of this train of thought are not lost on me._

_I was never a good brother, was I? All plagues start somewhere. Mine had always been festering, pushed deep down by bright smiles and self denial._

_Schlatt. He’s a little rat, indeed. Dream too. The whole of L’Manberg’s ideals, corrupted from the beginning._

_I know I’m the root of that plague. The other traitors spread it everywhere, but it still started with me. L’Manberg was never going to work out, was it?_

_Tubbo was made president just before I blew it up. Now he’s trying to rebuild it. Why would anyone bother to rebuild that wreck?_ My _wreck?_

_My symphonies are never finished. I know why now. I hate it, but at least I know. It’ll all work out in the end, anyway. It’s only fitting._

_I think I would look good covered in snow. Snowbur._

_Maybe then, I’d be a better brother._

~*~

There’s a small mountain of bricks before him. They’re baked a dark earthy brown in the afternoon sun, and as Tommy takes one in his hand, he sees waves of grainy texture and the occasional line of pale grass. 

“How’s the floor going?” Phil asks, swooping over to him. 

“Nearly done,” Tommy says, and grins when Phil’s expression lights up. “I’m just such a great fucking builder, huh?”

“You definitely have the potential,” Phil agrees. He pauses, and lowers his shoulders. “How’s Wilbur?”

“A coward, like usual,” Tommy says. He glances behind his shoulder, and sure enough, there his brother is in all his hunched and muted glory. His mood promptly dampens. 

“Promise I haven’t said that to his face again though,” he mutters.

“That’s - good.”

“Sure, sure.” Tommy doesn’t quite feel like diving into that shitfire of a topic right now, so he clears his throat and points at the pile of bricks. Lets his eyes wander over Phil’s clay-caked hands.

“So,” he says. “Do we have enough?”

“For a fireplace that’s less likely to burn the house down, yeah,” Phil says, “And to layer the outside perimeter. We should have enough wood cut for the frame already.”

“This forest will be a fucking wasteland by the time we’re done with it,” Tommy comments, and Phil laughs.

“That’s not a problem,” he says. “Techno actually did some calculations with me last night, and even by exaggerated estimates we’ll barely make a noticeable dent. A second floor shouldn’t be a problem either, when we get there.”

 _When we get there._ Tommy can’t help the faint smile that traces his lips at the idea. That this is home, that they will live here together for the foreseeable future. It’s becoming more of an established reality in his mind, with every new sash of gravel laid and batch of clay smoothed over for the floor of the soon to be main house. 

“Are we using those bricks right now?” Tommy asks, and Phil raises an eyebrow as he looks around. He kicks at a drift of snow next to them, particles glittering as they arc back into the sea of white that surrounds them.

It’s snowed multiple times since they arrived a month ago, and now it seems they’re swarmed with blizzards more often than not. It’s cut down productivity by a more than annoying margin, though with flaming torches and a bit of careful maneuvering Techno and Phil have since managed to do most of the “shoveling” work when needed.

“For the foundation, then,” Tommy says, taking the hint. “You sure the ground’s stable enough?”

Phil hides a grin behind his wings. He’s done it a few times now in response to various things Tommy’s said, like some inside joke only he’s privy to.

Fucking weird, but Tommy has other things to worry about. He’s tired of asking after everything. 

_Maybe later,_ he tells himself. 

“I checked the parts we completed last night, and it’s good enough,” Phil shrugs. “We’re not building a giant stone mansion.”

“Could you two stop talking for a moment and help us get this done?” Techno calls to them from the newly smooth foundations. “We don’t have all day!”

Tommy huffs a plume of curling white mist and makes his way over. 

The frame is surprisingly easy to set up, though a time consuming pain. Tommy drags and pushes beams into place wherever Techno and Phil directs him to, and moves on as they get stuck with the work of double and triple checking their calculations to ensure everything’s as exact as it can be before nailing.

He hears vague discussions of alignments and structure and eventual replacement (which better not come too soon - it takes so much fucking effort for all of this and it would be just their luck to have something stupid like termites or mold or weird bendy wood physics to destroy everything), and Phil stretches out his roll of measuring tape so often Tommy has half a mind to rip it apart before he trips and hits his head on something sharp. 

Overall, though, it’s not terrible. Wilbur doesn’t talk much, but that’s to be expected like usual.

Tommy’s not sure which he prefers at this point.

They work in relative silence as the cold punctuates his lungs and his muscles heave more and more, straining beneath the weight of grumbling timbers. Even back during Pogtopia, Tommy never had to do all that much physical labor. He’s starting to realize being a good fighter doesn’t translate into strength in other areas.

 _Took you long enough to figure that out,_ he thinks with a tint of wryness. _Tommy Innit, self aware. What illegality is this?_

They stop about two hours before the sun sets, when Phil declares he’s going to make dinner and Tommy turns to wash his hands in the nearby stream.

“Maybe a wedge piece here?” Techno’s voice slides into softness as Tommy continues walking, and he snorts as the last thing he hears is Phil reminding him to stop working and go inside.

He has to stop and stomp at hard, solid sheets to access the water beneath. It’s cold, biting, but refreshing all the same. He watches a few silver flashes dart down the currents and wonders how any creature survives the frigid temperatures beneath the ice. 

A strange paradox lies within the waters, not that he’s particularly invested in deriving the secrets of the universe from it. That’s Techno’s hobby. 

With a quiet huff, Tommy turns and heads back to their cabin. 

~*~

“Phil,” Tommy says. “I wanna try the elytra alone this time.”

Phil blinks. “Why?”

Techno glances between them, Wilbur sullenly pokes at his food next to him. There's something brewing beneath the surface here again, he can sense in that nebulous space of mind where thoughts of his family dominate. 

“Just - because,” Tommy says. “You can’t hold my wings forever - or whatever weird shit Techno would call it.”

“I think it’s something like ‘shove out the nest’,” Techno supplies. He frowns, tapping the table in a gliss of fingers. “I don’t remember exactly.”

“Yeah, that,” Tommy says.

“Are you sure?” Phil’s expression tenses, in the same way he does when watching Wilbur for any determinate amount of time. Techno straightens up, but remains silent.

“I’ll be fine,” Tommy says. “Just - I mean, I’m not Wilbur. I’m the pinnacle of indestructibility.”

“Then it doesn’t mean what you think it means,” Technos says.

“Yes it does,” Tommy shoots back. Phil sighs.

“I - okay,” he cuts in. “Promise me you’ll be back at least half an hour before nightfall.”

“Yeah, yeah.” 

Techno glances at Wilbur, whose eyes are half lidded and avoiding everyone’s gaze.

...well. Sure.

~*~

“How are you doing?” Phil asks, plopping down next to Techno on the bed.

They should try for some couches soon, he thinks. They definitely have enough furs for it. 

“Fine,” Techno says, and Phil wants to latch onto those words so much, but Tommy had just ran off with the elytra and an insistence on going about it alone, despite how much Phil wants to protest.

 _He’s_ _not Wilbur,_ he reminds himself. 

_Wilbur’s not himself either. They’re both your responsibility. You made it this way._

It’ll be fine. It has to be. He knows where Tommy is, after all. And Tommy’s never been one to appreciate constant guarding. 

Just a small flying practice. Alone. 

Shoving out the nest indeed. It happened too quickly and now not quickly enough, not that Phil ever learned how any of it works.

“Then why are you sharpening your sword?” he elects to ask Techno, grasping at the obvious exit from this spiral. 

“It was getting dull.”

Good to know his humor remains dry as ever. 

Phil fixes him with a too familiar stare. The moment crawls by, and he can count every second with ease.

Techno sighs. He leans back, like he always does eventually.

“Just in case, you know?” he says, waving a hand at everything around them. The silence. The safety. The - well, not quite _peace,_ but they’re getting there. Phil hopes. “We don’t want to get caught by surprise.”

Another pang in his chest, but at least this time Phil knows the specifics. 

“You want to train a bit, then?” Phil asks. “Not with that sword, of course, I don’t want any injuries. But we can make some wooden tools real quick.”

Techno is silent for another moment, undoubtedly considering the implications of the request. They both glance up, where Wilbur is in the loft above.

Phil meets his eyes again, a plea. For a moment of calm. Just a moment. 

“Sure,” Techno says finally. “A little spar.”

~*~

“You’re rusty,” Techno says, jabbing the rounded end of his makeshift spear at Phil’s heart.

Phil steps back with a raised hand and a wry smile as he returns his sword into a defending position. “I’m aware. Again?”

“I’ll try to go a little easier on you,” Techno says.

“I wasn’t aware I’m the one being trained.”

“We all need training, Phil.”

“And what does that really mean to you?”

Techno catches his eyes again, red reflecting the crown of sunlight that sets in rays behind Phil’s glossy wings. 

“You know,” he says, and lunges forward. Phil twists to the side and glances the attack off with his spear. A harsh, sharp clack jolts his body through the weight of the force and he thrusts his wings forward for balance.

To his surprise, Techno stumbles back with the force of the resulting wind, pink hair loose like streaming ribbons. A light stance does have its downside, as does soft snow. 

Techno raises his arm, and Phil’s eyes widen. His throws himself left- 

Too late, as the spear cuts through the air and knocks into his stomach. Phil lurches back, coughing as the offending weapon falls into the snow with a soft puff. 

“It didn’t hit my heart, so I’m still alive,” he grins with a wince. Techno flicks out a dagger from somewhere among the many folds of his coat and mimes another throwing motion. 

Phil rolls his eyes. Typical Techno, but these are the strategies which has won him countless battles and wars. Besides, he himself fights dirty all the time as well. Determination with practicality. 

His thoughts turn to Wilbur and Tommy, as they are always prone to do so now. Involuntarily, his shoulders slump.

“What is it?” Techno straightens and ploughs over, white dusting over his dark blue pants. “Did I throw it too hard?”

Phil gives a reassuring smile to wave away the concern, shaking his head.

“No, just - thinking. It’s been a while since it’s just been us, you know?” he says, glancing behind his shoulder. The sun is half visible behind rolling peaks of stone, mountains capped of shining white and streaked with shades of blue. 

“For good reason,” Techno says. “How do you think we’re doing?”

Phil turns and takes a seat on the snow. He’s wearing enough layers that he doesn’t mind the cold, facing the sunset as the mountain they’ve made their home on rolls out before him, slow declines and sharp drops and everything in between. 

“Not good enough,” he says.

“Same.”

“This - this shouldn’t be your problem, Techno.” Phil frowns, but even as the words leave him he knows that is no argument.

“You know me better than this, Phil.”

“I do.”

“...so how's our defenses going?” 

“Defenses?”

“You know.” Techno steps over and sits down next to him. “In case we get attacked. Or become endangered in some way.”

“You make it sound like we’re a dying species or something,” Phil chuckles.

“Comprehension stirs within thy vernacular proficiency.”

“No, it doesn’t!” 

Techno smirks as he leans back to dodge a shove.

“Case in point,” he says. Then he pauses, and turns back to him. “But really, how are our defenses? What safeguards do we have?”

“The fences? They do pretty good with the monsters, and most of those shambling things don’t move well in the snow anyway,” Phil says. “Um, your wire traps are still working. No spiders tapping outside the door so far.”

“But what _else,_ ” Techno presses, and Phil searches in his eyes.

“You have a totem, don’t you?” he asks. Techno nods, tapping the area just below his neck, covered by a light blue sweater. “I know I gave Tommy one sometime, and I always have one on myself. Wilbur - Wilbur didn’t want his and I figured he might just throw it away if I insist he keep it on him.”

Techno is still for a moment, before nodding slowly. Phil decides not to push the matter. 

He understands, after all.

“We don’t have anywhere near enough of anything to get a full beacon going,” Techno finally says. “But once we mine down and hit some lava we can at least make one.”

“And a Nether portal too, for potions,” Phil says. “You haven’t used any, have you?”

“A few drops here and there for Tommy’s cuts,” Techno says. “Sometimes for Wilbur’s too, when he’s not careful enough. Otherwise, no.”

“Should be fine until then,” Phil decides. “Focus on a solid shelter first. Though, we do need glass.”

“Later. When we get the obsidian.”

“Glass is useful for other things,” Phil hums. Techno huffs in annoyance, though his expression remains light. 

“We’ll visit the village later,” he says. “Who knows what they’ll be like.”

“Money may not solve everything, but it sure solves a lot,” Phil says, somewhat bemused, though another twinge of anxiety courses through him. “We’ll be fine.”

And if not, they have other methods.

The sky is dark now, a gradient of dull reds and watercolor purple. Chill frosts around his wingtips.

“There’s something else on your mind, isn’t there?” Techno asks. “Your expression’s usually not this lost. Or am I projecting fantasies again?”

Phil shakes his head. 

“Can’t stop thinking about Wilbur,” he says. “And Tommy. Feels like forever since it’s been just the two of us and yet - well, this is familiar. I don’t know what to do with anything else.”

“That makes two of us,” Techno replies. They turn to the sunset together. “You know I’m not exactly a paragon of emotional assistance.”

They fall into another silence. It’s a comfortable one, if festering with unspoken truths that await to breach their dam of fear. And fear can only hold back so much. Phil would rather it break sooner than later, seeing the consequences of his late arrivals. 

“Sorry I haven’t spent that much time with you lately,” he says eventually. “Alone, that is, with conversations. It’s - well, all Tommy and Wilbur and you have to just deal with everything as well.”

“I’m accustomed to war,” Techno hums. “Also - not suicidal, and not traumatized. You should keep that focus where you’ve had it.”

“I wouldn’t say you’re devoid of trauma,” Phil says, and thick crimson flashes among his memories. Sleepless nights and paranoia like spiderwebs in long abandoned cellars, awaiting the ever unsuspecting prey.

“I am,” Techno frowns, and there’s a surety to his tone that makes something in Phil squeeze again. 

“Techno, this whole thing with the Blood God and violence isn’t exactly what I’d call a healthy mental state.” Phil traces the edge of a feather. “There was this whole weird ritual shit and your purpose revolves around violence.”

“I’m fine,” Techno repeats. There’s no getting to him when he’s like this, Phil knows from experience, the mindset of a man dead set on believing what they wish. Besides, Techno always did wrap things up with other distractions.

“Just promise me you’ll try to sleep more,” he settles on for now.

“And you promise you’ll stay focused on Tommy and Wil?”

“...yeah,” Phil says. Techno has a point, after all, especially with now much both of his other sons seem to be straining. “I promise.”

He feels Techno relax against him, the waves of fur trim sinking the tiniest bit against his shoulder. 

“Alright,” Techno says. A tiny reassurance of their situation, but one nonetheless. “Alright.”

Phil eases out his wings and wraps one around Techno’s shoulders. It’s a familiar action.

 _Not familiar enough,_ he reminds himself.

Hopefully, they can change that. 

~*~

Ever since he requested the elytras and glided through the forest, Phil has walked and then flown alongside him with guiding wings and sharp eyes that never seems to miss a single mistake. It’s been two weeks.

This time, however, Tommy slings on his elytra, presses a bunch of rockets against his chest, and runs past it all. 

He feels the wings rising as they cut through the air’s stillness, giving every step a lifting bounce. And he can stop here, climb a tree, practice in the forest - but Tommy has been doing that the past few times he’s been here, Phil always nearby, watchful and with words of advice.

He’s finally taking his first few dives alone. 

Phil calls out a final reminder of caution, some lilting tone that gives Tommy a brief moment of pause. But he brushes the doubt aside quickly and spares a wave back before the forest envelopes him.

Eventually, inevitably, he’s at the cliffs again. 

And for the first time, he has fireworks. He clips most of them to the holsters around his belt, leaving two of the thin, spiraling red containers gripped tightly in his right hand. 

They are a powerful weapon, Tommy can’t deny it. He’s seen firsthand what they can do. 

_Terrified screaming. A trample of people clawing at the exits with the desperation of savaged animals. A sickening swath charred skin and tangled limbs, motionless and smoking in the midday sun._

_More ear-splitting shrieks and screeches and thundering bangs that feels as though they’re exploding Tommy’s heart._

_And Tubbo. Always, Tubbo, with a face split raw open and eyes of smoking tears. Techno’s crazed laughter dangling above them as the pearl lands and Tommy throws out a punch and tries not to scream when the pointed, spiraling red stabs closer-_

No, he shouldn’t linger on that, he doesn’t want more nightmares and doubts and - Tommy takes a deep, shuddering breath and closes his eyes.

Fireworks. Beyond just for killing, they’re also essential for sustained flight with an elytra, especially in places without sustained air currents. 

_Killing and escaping._

Such a useful tool. 

It’s this fact that leads him to the cliffs, and the world that yawns beyond him.

Tommy feels another thrill down his spine.

The past few times he’s only jumped off branches, practicing tighter turns and more graceful maneuvers. Phil would have a heart attack if he realizes what Tommy plans to do today, especially with the addition of the rockets.

But Tommy’s made it this far now. He doesn’t need Phil hovering over his shoulder, well intentioned as the actions might be. He doesn’t need anyone else filling Phil’s place, either. 

Tommy’s managed fine before and he’ll continue to manage himself fine afterwards.

This is more than just a taste of freedom, this is a taste of _independence_. Fuck leashes. 

This is _his_ moment. 

Tommy closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and leaps for the clouds. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, kudos, ect always appreciated! I adore feed back (though of course I understand a lot of people aren't comfortable or don't want to engage in that).
> 
> I got tons of great applications for a beta reader position after last chapter, way more than expected. I've actually given a few people preview and input access, and those that have agreed to be credited so far are sweet_magnolias, MackMack2527, 7CxRhye, and Vanree (ao3) as well as emergencyjoyride (tumblr).


	13. plunge a hand through the clouds and watch them weep

_ Tommy is flying.  _

_ The world pivots on the path he soars through, spinning like a toy box made just for him. _

_ He treats the box with wariness. He can be cautious!  _

_ The world does not make itself for anyone, afterall. Tommy’s been through enough to know.  _

_ He’s heard the stories. Techno called him Theseus.  _

_ And Tommy told that legend,  _ not today.  _ All the others can go fuck themselves as well. _

_ He glides down, and the world slowly stops spinning. The mountains spear through the clouds beyonds the cliffs he lands on, just as he left them.  _

_ Tommy grins and his elyra folds away.  _

_ The forest is familiar by now. Before long, the cabin is before him, every log and layer expected.  _

_ He pushes down the feeling of something cold plucking at his heartstrings, and pushes his way through the door. _

~*~

“Hello, Tommy,” Phil says as Tommy clambers over to the table, still picking at the corners of his eyes. “Good morning.”

He looks well rested, more than usual. Perhaps Phil shouldn’t worry too much after all, with him - Tommy’s growing more steadfast by the day. 

_ Stay alert, _ he reminds himself.  _ Stay focused. _

On exactly what, though, he still feels so lost on. 

“Yeah, great morning,” Tommy yawns. He takes a seat. Phil sets a plate of roasted nuts and fish in front of him, and turns to Techno.

“So as I was saying, probably another day or two until we can move beds in,” Techno says. “Got the boards cut for the floor yesterday, so today we’ll set them.”

“The roof is watertight,” Phil adds. “And I finally got the door done. We just have to reinforce the walls.”

“And build the ones inside.”

“There’s no rush for that, though,” Phil murmurs. He wonders how long it’ll take for them to get bored of this place, with all their restless natures. Techno would enjoy the peace for a while, but Phil’s still painfully aware of the gaps in his understanding of Tommy’s motivations. And Wilbur...

Wilbur shifts, next to him, food barely eaten. Phil curls a wing around his thin shoulders and shakes him gently with a rustle. 

Tommy finally looks up from his breakfast.

“And then what?” he asks, mouth still full. “We’re not sitting around here forever, are we?”

“Swallow first, Tommy, I can barely understand you.” Techno lets out a rare yawn, stretching his arms back behind him. “But I agree, that’s a rather dull experience.”

“Another month or two and it should be warm enough to begin planting,” Phil hums. “Afterwards… well, however long we feel like living here, we will. I have plenty of seeds in storage.”

“Just how much  _ do _ you have?” Tommy asks, eyes suddenly scrutinazing. “Feels like everything we’d ever fucking need is in your ender chest.”

“Survivalist instincts,” Phil shrugs. If his experience has taught him anything, it’s that one can never be too prepared. “The chests can carry ungodly amounts of stuff, Tommy, and even people who have them usually don’t realize how much you can squeeze. Plus, nothing can damage whatever’s inside. There’s no reason not to fill it with as many supplies as possible.”

Hence the ridiculous number of emeralds he has. As well as stacks of gold and silver coins, iron bars and diamonds cut clearer than wine glass, twisted shapes of bold, black netherite and a variety of other metals and gems, all of which piled up could be mistaken for a dragon’s hoard.

And that only takes up about a third of the space. Granted, quite a bit is empty now, furs laid out into bedding and blankets, most of the food used up on the trip to the mountains. They’re running low on other materials as well - nails, for example. Fireworks, if not for flying then at least as a signal or weapon.

Those worries can be easily taken care of soon, however.

“You gotta eat, Wilbur,” Techno suddenly interrupts. “Come on.”

Wilbur sighs in a stretched, squeezing way, but begins forking fish from his barely touched plate. 

Phil tries not to tense, feathers itching to vibrate. In stress or fear, he doesn’t know.

Does that mean something? Should he encourage Wilbur to eat more? Would it only curl Wilbur deeper into his shell, faced with authority, the way such tactics with Tommy often turns out? 

He doesn’t know. It’s a strange world, where Techno calls out such problems better than him, but perhaps that’s why Tommy admires Techno so much more.

Phil quickly finishes the last few bites of his own meal, smokey and delicate on his tongue. 

“You two should go begin work,” he says to Techno and Tommy. “I’ll make sure he finishes.”

Tommy nods, and almost drags Techno out. The latter gives Phil a small frown as he shuffles out the door. 

Phil turns his gaze to Wilbur, still shoving food in his mouth methodically. He does look thinner than before. Rags of glaze in his eyes, spindly fingers clutching the handles of his spoon like a clockwork machine. 

It’s such a reduction from who he used to be before. They had to go back somehow. But how?

Phil curls his wings around Wilbur tighter, and tries to smile.

~*~

They’re relaxed, is what Wilbur notes. The corner of his eye just barely swims through the fog to pinpoint the look of self assured confidence - perhaps too confident - on Tommy’s face. It’s not the relaxation of a family free of scars and shadows, Wilbur’s mistakes have made sure of that, but it’s getting closer.

Phil’s wings seem always to be wandering now. Guiding Tommy’s hand here or there, or just curled around one of them, a reassurance of their positions. Wilbur understands the sentiment, but it doesn’t change the burning sensation that overcomes him whenever the feathers brush against his skin.

It’s pathetic, is what it is. Tommy always leans into it, occasionally brushing the feathers with quick, curious fingers. Wilbur’s never seen him grow tired of the action, even now.

They laugh in the distance while setting planks and logs, Techno rolling his eyes as Tommy waves a block of wood around. Wilbur edges further from sight.

He drags another plank over and lines it against its brethren. Rows and rows of wooden faces, grains forever twisted frozen in silent screams when the lifeblood was drained out of them. 

And then Phil pushes into view, black feathers fluttering. Sharp blades in every silver sheen. 

“Wilbur, do you want to help Tommy fortify the walls?” he asks, and Wilbur shakes his head before the question even reaches him. 

He already knows. Phil tries to talk and act and he already knows it’s all futile. And yet he’s still such a coward.

The wood is smoothly cool beneath his fingers. Invisible splinters burrow their way beneath his skin and he doesn’t bother to claw them out. 

“Where are your gloves?” 

Wilbur finds sand in his throat, sinking and sinking. He settles for a shrug.

“Take mine.”

“No,” he rasps, and turns away. He has the floorboards to lay.

Techno shouts something in the background, and Tommy snips back. They fall into laughter sometime afterwards, quarrels quick and inconsequential as tiny spring breezes. Warmth blooms around him, always shying away from the bitterness of his touch. 

When Wilbur blinks again, his hands are burrowed with sawdust and Techno has a mountain of fluff in his arms.

“Wilbur,” he says, one of his eyes just barely visible as he tilts his head. “You have to get your stuff. We have enough space laid to move in today.”

“...right,” Wilbur finds the ability to say, and turns back to the house.

He passes Tommy clutching the bottom corners of a jukebox, face pressed against its dented surface as he shuffles forward beneath the doorway.

Wilbur slides to the right. His eyes are forward, on the light. It’s blinding, 

Tommy’s next to him. They’re both silent. 

“Wilbur,” Tommy says, stopping, and the silence is broken. 

He would have felt like crying, once upon a time. Now he has only the resolve to stop as well.

Tommy blinks when he doesn’t say anything. Wilbur’s not sure he can, at this point, vision already filming over into the fog. It’s easier, this way.

“Wilbur, I - um, can you help me carry my bed here?” 

“Sure,” Wilbur automatically responds, some vestigial part of him still processing the inflections in the way Tommy always requests things. With a slight rise in tone, a cusp of nervousness at the idea of inquiry. 

“I’m doing lots of flying - or gliding, whatever the fuck Phil calls it - with the elytra,” Tommy says, and they’re in the cabin. One of Wilbur’s hands is on the bumpy grain of Tommy’s bed.

“It’s really nice actually, like the winds are really cool around here. Phil was super upset when he realized his rockets were missing but I can fucking handle myself, you know?” 

Phil panicking is predictable, Wilbur thinks. He’s lost one son to recklessness, and he would be devastated to lose another.

Something seizes in his chest at the thought as well. He reaches up to clutch his head.

“Be careful,” Wilbur says. 

“Oh, not you too,” Tommy sighs. “I  _ am _ careful, I promise! You should join me.”

Wilbur thinks of the tumultuous sky and moss crawled cliffs and mists of clouds that drown every opening in his lungs. The world of white that permeates his entire soul as he drifts in the unknown. 

Tommy looks up at him, bright eyes blinking. They’re so bright, still. Brighter, even, or perhaps that’s not the right word. They’re alive. Stubborn flames that have learned the conviction to flare back tenfold from the forces that swipe upon them, singe every bit of skin they can reach.

It’s a dangerous flame, a delicate balance, but what Wilbur wouldn’t give to have given Tommy such a resolve just a few months earlier, back in the walls of Pogtopia.

The cliffs begin whispering again, mind pulling forth. 

“You shouldn’t want me to,” Wilbur says, and Tommy has a brief expression of furrowed confusion before something like sorrow - or despair, perhaps, line the edges of frustration in bitten lips. 

He doesn’t say more on the topic. Tommy’s voice slowly fades, and his hands keep moving.

The fog hazes. It floats. Wilbur shields himself behind the curtain. 

“I didn’t mean it, you know,” Tommy says, and they’re dragging the wooden frame of the bed with them. 

The mirror shatters.

Wilbur somehow finds the energy to curse his mind for never allowing him rest. He deserves it, of course, but it doesn’t mean he likes it. 

He’s always been selfish like that. 

“To say all those things, about - about you. That you didn’t deserve any of this or whatever.” Tommy shifts, the trails of hesitation catching his words like dandelion duff. “You were a good brother to me, Wilbur. You still - you can still be one.” 

Wilbur focuses on the lines of floorboards, sanded down to their raw core. Bare. They’re taunting him, asking him his deepest desires, balling the words up and through his throat. 

He doesn’t want to. He has to. He can’t run. His lungs are sandbags and-

“I’m sorry.” He chokes out the offer in a pathetic rasp.

“I know,” Tommy says. “I know.”

_ It’s not enough.  _

_ More. _

He can’t. 

Wilbur closes his eyes, and his mind is once again swallowed in a sinking plunge by the ocean’s beneath.

~*~

“Mellohi or Cat?” 

Tommy shrugs, so Techno swipes the disc centered with purple and slides it in the jukebox. Moves a torch further against the wall, shadows once again swirled in pantomimes above them. 

To the crackling of two smelting furnaces, in the corner of the ravine they’re taken rest in after a long day, Mellohi’s drawling waltz begins to hum. Techno closes his eyes as the strings join in a stilted harmony. 

It’s a type of macabre he enjoys, a sinister undertone that doesn't trip itself in an attempt to overly dramatize. 

“It’s not exactly the taste in music one would expect from you,” he says, and Tommy shrugs.

“I found them - the original discs. So they were mine. With how often Dream was fucking around with everything I don’t think I ever listened to them that often.” 

“Making up for lost time,” Phil says. “Always a wise idea.” 

“Wouldn’t you know, old man,” Tommy says. Techno nods along, hair grazing the edge of rough stone.

He frowns, and dusts bits of gravel off the pink waves. Wilbur is silent beside him, a now common but increasingly disturbing occurrence. 

Phil sighs, rolling his eyes, and for a moment Techno thinks he will simply take the jab and move along. 

But then his eyes hone with a flicker of resolution and Tommy straightens up with a tilt of his head.

“Too well,” Phil says. 

Mellohi decrescendos to a soft, thumping rhythm, expanding to fill the empty spaces of silence between them. Techno glances once again at Wilbur, eyes still fixated on some magnet in the far distance only he can perceive. 

He wants to move closer, some reassurance that Wilbur will not disappear forever into whatever fog clouds him. If only it is that simple. 

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Lots of catching up to do.”

_ Indeed, _ Techno thinks, and there’s a familiar bite at the edges of those words. But all the former bitterness has been shed off this topic now, leaving only tired acknowledgement and the ring of promise to pursue steadier ground. 

“Sorry,” Phil says. “I mean - you seem to be doing well enough with the rockets. I could show you more. It’s not the same without actual wings but...”

“Sure. I mean - last thing I need is for Techno to mock me about being Icarus or whatever,” Tommy huffs. 

The threads between them tenses, twists, but they no longer seem as insurmountable as before. Techno leans back, allowing himself to slump against the walls.

“I think you’ve broken any mold I can present,” he snorts. “The perils of rationality.”

“Something you can’t have,” Tommy responds.

_ It’s not wrong, _ is Techno’s first thought. By all rational means he shouldn’t have killed Tubbo, fought Tommy, let Wilbur spiral further and further without intervention - though he still stands by the withers. 

“I’m not a rational person,” he settles on. “I don’t aim to be.”

Tommy makes a noise of disbelief - or contempt - and looks away. Phil glances between them with furrowed eyebrows, hand clenched a fraction tighter. 

Cold forms a lump in Techno’s stomach. But he doesn’t say anything else, only immersing further into Mellohi’s strings, drawing cantabile echoes around the ravine.

“I think the iron’s done smelting,” Wilbur says, and Techno whips around to meet a passive, expressionless stare.

“R - right,” Phil manages, and stands up. “I’ll check.”

The field remains untrodden, save for a few wary nudges at the edge of the minezone. So close, yet so far. Even here, on home ground and smooth winds, they can’t push forward without hesitation hauling them back like folklore monsters beneath their beds. 

Just as imaginary. Just as powerful. Techno doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

~*~

It’s dark and well past his usual bedtime. Tommy can’t sleep.

Neither can Phil, judging by the constant shifting noise. Their first night in the larger house, probably. Old habits die hard, as evidenced by how Techno and Wilbur have their beds pushed together in a different corner (after Techno insisted on it for an hour and Wilbur relented only after Tommy agreed it’s a good idea). 

It means him and Phil’s semi-whispered conversations can still go on, though no doubt Techno picks up on the buzz of their murmurings. Not that he’s sleeping right now either, form unnaturally still on the bed, so Tommy doesn’t feel that terrible about it. 

And Wilbur never pays attention anymore. 

“I’m not - well, I’m still mad, but not like… before,” Tommy says into the darkness. Phil hums back in response, before the muted shuffle of blankets sounds.

“You have every right to be mad about… well, all three of us,” he says. The words are familiar to Tommy, a net of reassurance, but it will never be enough to ease the turmoil of uncertainty inside of him. Phil knows this. So does Techno.

“But we have to - I’m living with you guys and I gotta figure this shit out,” he mumbles in response. Tommy’s not sure why he’s so hung up on the idea, just that it’s a nagging persistence only worsening as the days pass by. 

If this is what that whole “character growth” thing Techno drones on and on about is, then for the first time Tommy feels sorry for those characters. 

“We will,” Phil sighs. “Why did - I didn’t want to seem overbearing before, but I need to ask eventually. Why didn’t you tell me about using the rockets?”

Good fucking question. Tommy’s not quite sure either - he could be, but it’s a decision he hasn’t thought that much of beyond surface level. 

_ Whoops, _ he suddenly realizes. Wilbur’s silence wasn’t deafening before, while Tommy was in the middle of it, but now it loops in his head with an uncomfortableness akin to scraping glass. 

“Um - well, you wouldn’t have let me,” he admits. “And I wanted to anyway.”

“...true, not without me there,” Phil says. “The rockets are a good failsafe, especially since those are duds that don’t explode. But why-”

Tommy hears Phil’s voice crack, like a wrench forcibly yanking the words from his throat. 

“I…” he bits his lip.  _ This is fucking hard,  _ he thinks.  _ Wilbur’s onto something, alright. Damnit.  _ “I think I wanted to prove something. Like I wasn’t - always so fucking dependent, you know?”

First it had been Phil, taking him in and providing food while Tommy had tried to figure out how long it would take to get kicked out. Then it was Wilbur, raising him in a way Phil never did, whispering reassurances and explaining the mysterious world around them, magic and music and the deep, intricate wells of history. 

Techno had helped, but it was always Wilbur in the end, and so Tommy had followed Wilbur to Dream’s Kingdom, the SMP. Through the L’Manberg War for Independence, and then into exile, and then… back with Phil, here.

Tommy, the child. A naive, stupid child. Does what he’s told, a pawn manipulated on so many levels. Always following. 

“Wanted to follow myself for once,” he mutters, eyelids shutting. “Was stupid, I know.”

“Do you feel better afterwards?” Phil asks. 

Tommy’s eyes flare open again at the question, so different from the reprimand he had been expecting. 

“Yes,” he admits, and then pauses. “Well, about the flying itself. Then I realized I had to talk to you, and then it was like,  _ oh shit, fuck, _ Phil’s gonna be so mad, so - yeah.”

“It was a risk,” Phil says. “I’m not going to ban you from anything - well, unless it’ll definitely get you killed. But you have the totem, don’t you?”

Tommy presses two fingers against cold, smooth gold, the tiny statue laced into a bracelet against his left wrist. 

“Yeah,” he says. 

“And you wear it as a bracelet?”

“I don’t-” Tommy finds himself swallowing before he can stop. “The chain’s gotta be strong, yeah? But I don’t wanna get fucking choked with it or whatever.”

“I understand that idea,” Phil says, and Tommy wonders how true that is. But it’s not relevant right now.

“You could reshape the gold.”

“What?” Tommy turns and runs his fingers across the rounded head of the totem. 

“The magic is imbued in the gold, but gold is malleable,” Phil says. “And a good conductor too, which is why so many magical artefacts are made of it. It contains and transmits energy well. Also why you can get higher enchantments with gold.”

“So you mean I can melt and - and shape it?”

“The magic that’ll revive you will still work fine, as long as you don’t completely melt it. Just a bit of heat. You can even get rid of the emeralds if you want - they increase the reach of the magic as a sort of conductor to surrounding life, but if it’s just straight up touching you all the time that doesn’t matter.”

“That’s fucking pog,” Tommy breathes. “Could we - could we make a piece of gold wire with sharpness 10 and slice the green bitch in half with it?”

“If you really want to,” Phil laughs. “It would take a lot of books and energy though.”

“Well, first is making this bracelet my bitch,” he grins. Phil chuckles.

There’s a pause, and Tommy’s tempted to roll over and try sleeping again. His eyelids feel heavier by the second, a drowsy familiarity settling into his bones.

“For the record, I’m not mad at you,” Phil suddenly says. Tommy blinks. “Worried, maybe, but I try to keep it reasonable. Just - again, let me know next time, okay? After everything with L’Manberg I feel like I always need to know. About things like this.”

Guilt worms its way into Tommy at that, heavy in his chest. Wilbur’s words, his declaration of L’Manberg’s tyranny will forever haunt him, but Phil’s is - well, regret is a fucking bitch alright. A different kind, for Phil, and Tommy’s beginning to recognize the scope of its implications.

“Right,” he swallows. His chest twists uncomfortably, like slowly peeling back old bandages, skin and crusts of blood still clinging desperately to familiar blankness. “And - well, I’m still kinda mad, but we’ll talk this shit out or whatever. Later. I’m trying to sleep.”

“Right. Goodnight, Tommy,” Phil whispers with a slight chuckle, and Tommy yawns before turning back beneath his covers.

“Goodnight, Phil,” he murmurs, and falls asleep to a soft, assenting sigh. 

~*~

_ The clouds are swirling with dread. Gray as ashen basalt, weeping quicksand as they sink into him. Wilbur’s mouth opens. His lungs are swarmed with gravel and grit and that sinking, weeping quicksand, chokingly leaden. Stuffed like a bag of flour, silent and still. _

_ He’s on a cliff again. It’s fitting, he supposes. The darkness roils like a sea below him, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it ran all the way down to whatever cold underworld exists in this twisted universe.  _

_ A shadow drifts over, mouth twisted in a silent scream as his eyes stab into Wilbur’s. Tears roll down the dark, wispy face like beads of lava.  _

_ Wilbur can’t move. His body is some toy, wobbling back and forth on an invisible axis like his legs have been replaced by a sphere of stone and he has to move and he can’t move-  _

I’m sorry,  _ he tries to say.  _ I miss you.

_ But his lungs are full and his windpipe thinner than guitar strings.  _

_ “It’s not enough,” the shadow hisses, yanking wires through his mind, stepping forward. “Repent.”  _

But I can’t.

_ Wilbur has to move. He tries to move. He can’t. He’s anchored to the cracked, dry dirt beneath him, still wobbling helplessly back and forth.  _

_ Are they in a desert now? _

_ The cliff is still there. _

_ “You must. You have to-” _

I can’t.

_ “You want to. You want to be loved, don’t you?” _

I can’t.

_ “Oh. but you’ll have to.” The shadow advances. “Or I’ll make you.” _

_ Wilbur gasps and shoves his rolling body back with a pitiful scrounge of desperation. The force bobs him around on the rounded base below, spinning foolishly beneath the clouds. His lungs are still packed full.  _

_ He thinks there are tears on his own cheeks. He doesn’t know for sure. He doesn’t know anything for sure, except that he can’t he can’t please don’t make him he has to- _

_ The shadow reaches out with a wisp of fingers. Wilbur recoils and slams his head on some invisible wall, mirrored like ice and freezing with the edge of sharp steel. He shuts his eyes. _

I’m sorry.

_ “Not enough,” the shadow snarls, reaching out again with a heat cored with burning lava and Wilbur’s mind shrieks as it suddenly lunges forward. _

**_“NOT ENOUGH!”_ **

_ Wilbur slams his head down and down and down again against the cracked dirt and there’s something breaking and the touch is burning his face and he has to move he can’t be here why is he here- _

_ With a sudden lurch of his world the cliffs fall away. The shadow flares up wings of golden fire and  _ soars _ and the darkness is so, so cold. Ice frosts over his lips with a final stitch of the needle.  _

_ The world is blind, and he is the blindest of them all, and nothing will ever reach for him again. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Was not expecting Tommy to be this self aware lol but that's the way it went. As always, I greatly appreciate all the support for this fic!! There’ve been so many comments and I’ve been extra tired lately so I’ve been taking really long to reply to them. Might reach a point where I have to take back my previous words since I can’t respond to everyone, but rest assured I definitely read everyone’s comment.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, and thanks to the betas!


	14. the meandering path to freedom

He’s back here again. His mind always drags back to the cliffs, stumbling in the dark as a shivering, ragged mess. The last remnants of an ideal now crushed to ink history’s pages. 

It has taken a while to move past Techno’s defenses, but even gods have to sleep some time. And Wilbur, despite his former reputation, knows the benefits of shadows. 

Perhaps this path has always been destined for him.

He sits down, the cliff’s sharp edges digging into skin. His feet dangle above caressing air and a drop so steep nothing can be seen save for blots of gray and blackened mist.

Wilbur breaths out, throat trembling. The moon judges, a half slice of paleness above. 

_ No, _ he thinks.  _ I can’t. _

_ Not this, not that. Still delaying in the inbetween. _

He digs his palms into the stone and drags his legs up, feet glancing against the cragged edges. For a frozen moment Wilbur teeters on the line of freedom, spinning.  _ He can escape. _

But he jerks back and turns his gaze to the house. The night is old and sinking. 

_ I can’t, _ he thinks, and he wants to cry, choke out sobs until the shame and frustration and forever lingering sense of defeat drains out with them in an icy cold torrent of grief. 

_ Not today.  _

~*~

“Do you want a guitar, Wilbur?” Phil asks. “Or some similar instrument? When we eventually go down to the village I can ask around.”

“No,” Wilbur says, and the flat tone shuts the beginnings of the argument down right then and there. Techno glances between the two, and clears his throat.

“Wilbur,” he says, suppressing a nervous tremor in his tone. He can’t show hesitation here. Not such a weakness. He never shows weakness, especially not in situations such as these. 

Techno’s mind loops this mantra, a thin string that anchors precariously all the scattered thoughts which fly about. “Wilbur, I want to ask you something.”

He glances at Phil, head tilting ever so slightly towards the door. It’s been a few days since they’ve moved into the house, and the internal walls that make up their separate rooms are now built solidly in place, dark planks and logs of support. 

They are not, however, soundproof. Phil acknowledges the message with a nod. 

“I’ll go help Tommy with his flying,” he says, glancings between the two. “But…”

“I’ll let you know,” Techno says.  _ You won’t be in the dark about Wilbur again. _

Phil nods, and closes the door. 

“Wilbur,” Techno says. Wilbur turns to him, ever so slightly. 

_ Don’t mess this up, _ he thinks.  _ Don’t. Can’t. _

“You mutter to yourself when you write your journal sometimes,” he begins, and Wilbur stiffens. “I can tell it’s not been a very - uh, stress relievin' exercise.”

“You haven’t-” Wilbur takes a step back, shoulders hunching in a way that’s far too familiar, eyes pinned on a predator about to pounce. Techno’s breath catches his throat. 

Does Wilbur really…?

“I haven’t,” he says, reluctant to pursue that train of thought. He hesitates, and takes a step back as well. The space between them widens. 

Wilbur’s gaze is still pinned itself against him. 

“I’m your brother, Wilbur,” Techno says in as even a tone as possible. Too soft is a threat lurking and too loud is a menacing surprise. “We’ve lived together for half our lives.”

“You don’t need to get involved,” Wilbur hisses. 

_ Get involved.  _ How else does Wilbur see it? Meddling, prying, invasions of privacy into whatever dungeon he’s trapped himself in?

“I gave you that journal,” Techno whispers. Sharpness catches his throat, and he tries not to choke.  _ Don’t mess up again, stop failing, try harder. _ “I know how much you love to write. But it’s meant to be an escape, Wilbur, not a snare.”

“It  _ is _ an escape.”

“Not the one you should be taking.”

The words pin them both down, and despite it all, it still feels like predator and prey. Technoblade, purpose always looming behind him. No matter how much he tries, he can never break that mold.

“Wilbur,” he tries again, because there is nothing left to do. “I don’t think you should write for a while.”

“Techno,” Wilbur says. His eyes are hard for the first time since they left the SMP. They glitter with a dangerous determination. “I think you should check on Tommy and Phil.”

Techno has no response. He can’t do this. 

_ You have to.  _

He can’t. 

_ But you have to. _

“Wilbur,” he says. “What are you doin’?”

No response.

“I think I’ll stay here,” Techno says, and they both understand what  _ here _ means.

Wilbur sits down on his bed, and closes his eyes. Techno moves over and settles next to him.

“Alright,” Wilbur says finally, and the resignation in his tone grips Techno’s heart with a pounding fear he has no means of resolving. 

_ Useless, _ Techno thinks, and he can feel the stoicism melting off his face, leaving only tiredness - and a tint of fear. A pathetic sight for Wilbur, no doubt. 

_ What’s a blade without a target? _

_ Nothing.  _

~*~

This night, Techno reads. 

The book is one acquired from a passing traveler on the way here, with the sheen of newly-bound leather.  _ 50 Untold Tales  _ is the title, with a blurb that claims the collections of short stories within would have been lost to time, had they not been saved by the collector.

Profit off the work of others, then, but who is Techno to complain of such practices?

He’s halfway through so far. Techno has glanced over the table of contents, and as he opens to the next story a sense of dread wormed its way into him. 

_ Raven Songs _

_ By Whitelisted  _

_ Preface: Whitelisted is the sole pseudonym of an author, rumored to be some king or distinguish war general, who has seen the success of many of their works - here includes one their few works which is still unknown, until now.  _

_ The story of how I acquired this tale is a strange one. As some may be aware, after the second explosion of L’Manberg President Tubbo held an auction of various items to raise funds for rebuilding. Among these items auctioned is a book containing stories alleged to have been written by Whitelisted himself. Supposedly, Whitelisted had been a close friend of Wilbur Soot and Tommy Innit, former exiled leaders of L’Manberg, and aided them during the time. These stories, if President Tubbo is to be believed, were written during this period and lost during the explosion before they could be published, having only been recently found again.  _

_ It certainly matches Whitelisted’s writing style, if more metaphorical in nature than their usual works. Either way, Raven Songs is a strange haunting tale.  _

_ Ravens are songbirds. _

_ Despite their reputations, they are songbirds, and their vocal ranges are among the most impressive in the animal world. Some say that for certain ravens, there is something magical, otherworldly about their songs, deep layers of harmonics left ringing in the mind long after the waves themselves have silenced.  _

_ Once there was a raven who soared the skies and brushed the valleys and whose songs entranced all that listened. The raven had silvered eyes and soft feathers and the love of his friends and family.  _

_ “We should mark a territory so others cannot impose their tyranny upon us,” said the raven one day to his flock, and he sang a familiar tune. A territory was marked and a nation built, an organization of power with the raven’s song at its pinnacle. _

_ His flock swarmed around the raven’s songs of hope and glory, and so every day the raven wakes with a fire that burns brighter than the last.  _

_ But there were forces that eyed the raven’s ascent with offended eyes, for the territory the ravens had marked they deemed encroached onto theirs. _

_ Ravens are songbirds, and songbirds wish to sing freely. War chokes the lungs, stifles the voice, burdens the mind. The raven’s songs slowly spluttered, losing its shine and dulled with a heaviness his flock no longer wanted to hear. _

_ The territory’s legitimacy was established eventually, but with a cost that ravaged families and tore their new home to pieces.  _

_ Balances of power can shift so abruptly. Conflict is the main instigator. Through popular votes the raven was removed, and the flock presented power to the likes of another. _

_ Competition is good for the whole, bad for the individual. And so the slide of power shifted in accordance, and the raven was then banished.  _

_ But the raven was not done. His home, his people, his dreams choked out - with nothing left to lose he had everything to regain.  _

_ His songs grew darker, but they grew more captivating as well. Where they once inspired hope they now entranced despair. Promises of glory became promises of revenge. _

_ Some which supported the raven in exile slowly distanced themselves, while others tried to calm him with all the wrong ideas. A very few, however, encouraged the descent, whispering validations or participated with an idleness that presented justification.  _

_ And so, betrayed and stripped of everything, the raven planned.  _

_ It is said that the raven’s songs became so overpowering it choked all rationale from the listener’s mind. That they were the very embodiment of madness itself, of regret and pain and furious vengeance all wailing in a symphony without an end.  _

_ Eventually the raven returned, and sang, and his flock was driven so mad by his songs they tore each other to pieces in a frenzy of blood and fury, and the nation disbanded in chaos. _

_ The raven, they say, still wanders the world with slitted silvered eyes and tangled, matted feathers. That he spreads the song of vengeance wherever he flies, and that nations born of bloodshed, leadership teetering, should always be wary of his looming presence. _

_ For the world is full of traitors, and all it takes is a single song to set the scene alight.  _

Techno closes the book with a too loud snap and shuts his eyes.

Of course Tubbo would do that, of course, and it makes practical sense, but he wishes he could march across the sea and slap the idiot in the face right now. He  _ is _ an orphan, isn’t he? 

The story had come from a moment of impulse, observing Wilbur’s descent. Techno had considered burning the pages afterwards, realizing its numerous awkward implications, but ultimately left the book in his hidden base. He had reasoned he could pack it away or get rid of it after the revolution. 

Turns out, emeralds were not the only thing Tubbo had stolen. 

He takes a deep breath, and reaches out to open the ender chest that sits in the corner of their living room. Wilbur can’t read about this, at least not for a very long time. 

He’ll have to be more careful in the future. He always has to be more careful, but-

Techno leans back in his chair, rubbing the sides of his head. Wilbur should be asleep by now, in their room.

Why couldn’t he do something right with relationships for once?

~*~

But now the night is young, and it is unforgiving.

The trees whisper when he walks between them, eyes in every shadowed spot. Rattling branches lap each other in the canopy above. 

The moonlight path rivers through the forest, watery and weeping like clouds. When his feet touch down Wilbur imagines continuing to sink, deeper and deeper.

It’s a clear night. Snow freshly fallen on that day, all of them shut inside from dawn to dusk as a blizzard raged. Wilbur stumbles his way through piles that reach high as his waist at times, batting away soft, cold fluff as he continues on that familiar path.

He’s wearing his old exile outfit, the brown coat and thin white shirt. 

The world is silent. The sky is clear with starlight sparkling, moon rounded. Nothing stirs but Wilbur, still swimming through an ocean of snow.

_ Quite appropriate,  _ he thinks. He wonders if he can drown himself in it, shove his throat raw with scratching crystals and collapse deep into the nebulous cold.

But he would feel warm, he remembers. The body’s response to hypothermia. 

Wilbur’s not sure he can face that. The warmth is terrifying. It reaches out, transcends his dreams and constricts with every breath of life he takes.

The very edge of the cliffs have only a small swath of snow to cover them, wind constantly battering at the pile. Wilbur brushes it all away and sits down at the edge again. 

If he looks down far enough, he thinks he can just barely make out a collection of glowing lights where the mountains join in valleys. 

Time drags on. The world darkens further, and shrouds with the chill of premature blizzards. 

At first Wilbur thinks it’s another delusion his mind has conjured, when the first flakes brush his cheek, but then he blinks and the white is battering further. 

_ Well,  _ he thinks, and considers. 

~*~

Phil wakes to two words that strike him with more fear than any nightmare ever could. 

“Wilbur’s gone,” 

“Where?” He shoots up and whips to Techno even as the answer rises up in that treacherously familiar way.

“Outside, presumably,” Techno says. Tommy’s eyes flicker between them, a paler bluer than clear winter skies. His face matches that paleness as he too scrambles out of bed.

Phil almost flies as he sprints to the door, donning his coat on the way out. Tommy is unnaturally silent as he copies him, save for a muttered swear as his bootlaces get tangled. 

Techno is out and ahead of them all somehow, which Phil has a split moment to be grateful for. 

It’s snowing. A near blizzard, though not quite.

A great, sinking feeling weighs into Phil’s being. The world is shades of white and black, like some death has sucked the color away from them. 

He can’t stop thinking back, to L’Manberg and explosions and  _ not again. _

_ It can’t happen again. _

_ He’s not too late, is his first thought when he sees Wilbur hunched before the button. He can still fix this. _

_ He can help Wilbur, he can save Tommy’s hopes, he can make sure they’re the family they once were.  _

_ Then Wilbur whispers, “it was never meant to be,” and all of Phil’s hopes crumble the moment Wilbur turns back to him, mouth twisted in a sneer and eyes too wide and hungry.  _

_ Like that of a man who has nothing left to anticipate in his life but the release of death.  _

_ He stares into the blade and not into Philza, no matter how much his gaze is searched and how desperately Phil begs.  _

_ And Phil still had the audacity to think,  _

“It’s not too late.”

~*~

The rocks are sharp and jagged below the cliff. It’s a long fall. On most nights Wilbur can’t make out any semblance of the terrain, but under a full moon and starry constellations the pale shades are visible. A sea of waving grays, occasional pearly white. The snow is far less down there, shielded by the rest of the mountain, the winds that blow from the opposite seaward side. 

_ “I heard there was a special place.” _

Wilbur finds the words creeping out, rising in their familiar phrases. 

_ “Where men could go and emancipate.” _

L’Manberg, his unfinished symphony. That thing Tubbo’s built up - it’s not L’Manberg. 

_ “The brutality and the tyranny of their rulers.” _

L’Manberg was founded on lies. On poison. On ideals shattered before they had ever left Wilbur’s mouth, documents dripping of resentment. Nothing that could ever support a nation. 

Some would say that whatever Tubbo’s leading - that it’s better. Wilbur was never a leader who held the best interests of his citizens at heart, after all. 

_ “And some may say this place is real,”  _

He chokes, and closes his eyes. 

_ “But I know for sure, that you’ll still kneel, _

_ To the brutality, and the tyranny of their rulers.” _

His L’Manberg. 

_ “My L’Manberg, my L’Manberg, my L’Manberg, my L’Manberg.” _

His symphony, forever unfinished.

Now words trace his mind. Still static and glitched from disuse, but they come forth all the same. Music already set, so what are a few poetic lines? They rise from the seas in a current that sears his lungs. 

_ “Now just a crater, full of lies, _

_ Promises broken, unheard cries, _

_ Noteblock choirs rotting in the sunshine.” _

Does this count, finishing his symphony? 

Wilbur once read of ghosts. Spirits that linger beyond death, anchored by some unfinished business. Most stayed around forever - after all, what change could desire bring about, without a body to accompany it? 

_ “And what they don’t know, of their home, _

_ It’s a place that’s forever lost and blown, _

_ Its glory, it was never meant to be.” _

He hopes all his business is finished, or whatever he considers unfinished business. It’s all so subjective, anyways, and shouldn’t the ghost decide? It seems an existence worse than whatever he has right now. An agency with no means of furthering it - paradoxically aimless.

Tommy would drag him back with a furious scream, Wilbur knows. He has every right to.

But Wilbur is so tired. He’s tired of ghosts, of pasts, of mistakes clawing every thought that flits through his sorry excuse of a mind. He’s even tired of L’Manberg, in a way. 

So his symphony is unfinished. So it’s modified, parodied, stripped of its original context.

For once, Wilbur thinks,  _ so what? _

He can’t do anything about it. He never could.

_ “My L’Manberg,” _ he whispers, the motion so familiar, words slipping from his mouth like the tears from his eyes.  _ “My L’Manberg. Dead L’Manberg.” _

He takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes. Heat rises in his chest, unbidden, an aura of sickly death in the face of the cold. It’s snowing again, he registers faintly. 

And everything is burning, like Wilbur is the lone torch in the wide, open world. 

He’s sorry, he realizes almost hysterically. He’s so sorry. And yet. 

_ “Still my L’Ma...” _ the winds are harsh, pounding against his back, it’s so easy to lean forward. 

_ “...an...berg.” _

_ He is falling. _

_ He is falling.  _

_ It’s so cold. _

Flashing white. Sharp, cracking jolts. Pain bursts like dying stars within him. 

_ He is blind, and he has fallen, nothing will ever reach for him again.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, hm. Yeah. 
> 
> :D
> 
> by the way ive been neglecting a lot of other stuff so gotta take another break from writing this for a while. dont be surprised if the next update is in like early march. still love feedback.


	15. shipwreck in a sea of faces

Techno stands at the edge of cliffs, and wonders what it would feel like to stare down into its depths and  _ hear _ its crooning, twisted melodies, scrabbling with all purchase in the echoes of his mind. 

To wish for its embrace so readily that all mortal tethers fray down to nothingness.

“He’s not here,” he whispers as Phil rushes down in a flurry of sharp feathers.  _ He’s gone, _ Techno doesn’t say. Words hold such tantalizing power for the mind. 

But Phil understands.

“You - you know he-”

“Yes,” Techno says, but sheets of snow that swarm around them muffle his reply to almost oblivion. Too dark, stars blotted and the moon hiding behind its sea of murkied curtains.

He could almost fool himself into believing they were in a black box with only the icy storm to keep them company, a raging army with an intention to conceal Wilbur’s life away. 

“But he’s not surviving again in this weather either,” he says quietly. 

Through the darkness, a curtain of feathers brushes down Techno’s arm. He presses closer to Phil. Glances back.

“Where’s Tommy?” he asks, the thought sudden flaring. Another bout of panic seizes him as he feels his mind splitting - Tommy, not Tommy, they can’t lose him to the impenetrable coldness as well.

“I’m here,” a small voice calls through the gloom - but no, Tommy’s close enough to be at the edge of his sight, bundled in so many layers he seems twice his usual size. “Not that I can see anything with this fucking cloth over my eye,” he adds with a mild hint of annoyance. 

“I told you to stay back,” Phil says, and another wing brushes out. “You promised you’d stay safe.”

“I’m very warm, Phil,” Tommy retorts. “But I don’t think Wilbur is.”

Techno freezes, and so does Phil. Tommy stills with widened eyes. For a terrible moment they’re all forced to reexperience that cold cloud of dread settle within their hearts all over again, that Wilbur’s gone and not here and-

“No,” Techno manages. “But he’s-”

“I know what you did with the totem, by the way,” Tommy says. He’s not trembling, and Techno doubts he could, wrapped stiff as he is, but there’s a familiar, terrified warble to his tone that sends him reeling back to the festival for another awful moment.

“And I heard it,” Tommy continues.

Techno’s mind stutters to a halt.

“What?” Phil rushes forward and grips Tommy’s shoulders, mittens bending at unnatural angles. 

“I heard the - that exploding sound,” Tommy said. “When I was back in that area you told me to stay in. It was way below us, I’m sure.”

_ That’s why he came here,  _ Techno realizes.  _ To tell us.  _

“Below us?” Phil repeats. 

_ Below them. _

So Wilbur had jumped. So Wilbur had died. So the totem was set off.

So Wilbur was - in some ocean of snow, buried deep and unknowing. 

A needle in a haystack, a body on a mountain, floating aimlessly in the white.

_ How long has it been?  _

Wilbur had been wearing his old Pogtopia coat, thin leather and singed edges. 

Techno has not cried in a decade. He can’t now. Especially not with how fast his tears will freeze -  _ and that’s what you worry about,  _ that familiar insidiousness whispers.

But he can’t. He can’t, not when he’s failed once, not when the rest of his - his  _ family _ is…

“I change my mind, I’m fucking cold,” Tommy suddenly says. “We need to find Wilbur before my blood literally freezes.”

“Tommy-”

“I survived the revolution and Dream and everything else, I can’t fucking die here and neither can Wilbur-”

“Tommy, you’re going back to the house,” Phil cuts in, and the words thaw the frozen of Techno’s mind enough for him to rush forward and begin dragging Tommy through the clogging snow. 

“What - but Wilbur!” Tommy twists, but Techno’s grip is firm. Fingers tightening with the desperation of a fresh, dripping wound. 

“You’re not staying out here,” Techno manages in response. “We’re not risking you freezing to death.”

_ Too. _

He was supposed to keep watch. He was supposed to make sure Wilbur didn’t - did do  _ exactly _ what he had feared he would do. 

He shouldn’t have been sleeping. This is why Techno doesn’t sleep - look where it has led him to, crystaled ice like daggers plunging into everything he cares for. With Wilbur gone and his frosted black eyes forever staring accusingly into his soul.

His breath catches again.

Are they so willing to accept Wilbur’s death? That so soon, he is now gone?

Techno would scream, but his throat has long since been silenced, dead from years of neglect. All humanity stripped down to drying blood. Instead, he quickens his pace, Phil following in halted steps behind them. Tommy stiffens and stumbles, scowl so clear even without a visual. 

“I’m fine-”

“Tell me that again,” Techno says, voice wavering. “That you’re fine. That we’re fine. That you would do this to us.”

It’s a cheap trick that presses yet another anvil against his chest, but Tommy quiets at the accusations And then his feet begin dragging forward as well, trailing tear lines in the gray washed ground. 

He can’t cry. He can’t scream. He can only move and do and even then he  _ can’t. _

He gave Wilbur that journal, he thinks faintly. He contronted his brother - and failed - so many times. Meaningless squabbles to the end, was that all it was? Vigil kept, but not enough?

His grip tightens, steps wider. Techno has already lost so much by his own mistakes. He can’t lose Tommy as well. 

~*~

Trudging between sheer cliffs and hidden cracks that could swallow legs whole, he finally decides he had made a dumb decision.

In his defense, it wasn’t supposed to snow tonight. 

_ You already got the rocks. Just get out, _ he thinks. Of all the reasons to die, freezing while collecting pretty rocks for his garden in the middle of the night is not what he has imagined. 

He turns and fixes his eyes back to the village, where a soft, candled glow emanates from the window of one of the houses. 

Just as he is about to take a shaky step forward, a loud explosion rocks his head. He hisses, kneeling into the snow to steady himself, vision doubling into misty duplicates. 

_ What was that? _ A tree exploding, as they have been known to do when enough of their sap freezes? But the sound is different, ringing with a persistent screech that seems to have taken howling residence in his head. Too sharp, too… powerful.

It’s suddenly colder, too. The storm has picked up, but this is a different type of cold, like the strange otherworldly  _ wrongness _ of Nether portals. He can’t put a finger on it, but what he does know is that the weather is absolutely not responsible.

With a slight shake, he pulls the fur trim of his hood tighter and stands up to turn around.

There’s a golden tingle in the air, he realizes, though it’s fading. They glimmer even in the darkness, silent and almost judging, in a way. 

There’s a body in the snow. 

The thought registers suddenly, first with confusion and then with a sharp alarm, and he hastily picks his way over.

There’s also blood. Lots of it, leaking from twisted joints and other indiscernible locations. 

Something’s definitely broken, he thinks with a wince as he slowly pokes a leg. He’s no doctor, but he can definitely see that much. 

Where the fuck did this person come from? The cliffs above? What idiot goes mountaineering in the middle of the night?

He suppresses a huff at that thought. At the very least, he kept his adventures to the base of the mountains, gentle slopes and winds muffled to caressment. 

He makes a quick decision, and sets his basket of stones on the ground. Hauls the person onto his arms with a stumble. The body’s not heavy, but he’s not exactly strong either.

Great, the blood’s soaking into his coat. 

With a sigh, he begins the trek back down to the village.

~*~

“I have to check the area,” Phil says as they near it. “You know I’m the only one who can.”

Techno nods, jerkingly. 

“Don’t - don’t do anything stupid, Phil,” Tommy says. “I fucking swear, if anything happens, I’ll - I’ll...”

“I know,” Phil says through the wind. And his wings snap up against the snow. 

Flying down the mountain in this weather is a miserable endeavor with the icy snow, catching every corner of his feathers in beads of sharp coldness. The wind thrashes, nature's raging gray torrents. Through it all, lines of curly gold, drawing him forth. 

And thoughts break, as they are prone to do. 

He couldn’t stop Wilbur. Phil has failed - yet again. Even if it wasn’t by his own blade - well. 

If Wilbur is dead, then he’d failed his promise to Techno as well, and at least - at least Techno tried.

Was there some turning point Phil had missed? A single conversation, single action that could have altered it all? Dragged Wilbur back from the dredges of his mind? Or was it a slow march Phil had always pushed and prodded, but never paid due attention too, always hovering hesitance at its blackened waves?

He had taken a responsibility the moment he took Wilbur in and declared him his son, so full of elation at the idea of a family back then. 

Would it have been better, to leave Wilbur to his devices, still singing for money on dusty streets? To have merely tossed some coins his way and given a brief, fleeting smile, acknowledged the reality that he was not, would never, be cut out for fatherhood?

Was… was Phil the one who killed Wilbur?

The snow bites through the lining of his boots and the too thin wool of leggings, but he is beyond caring at this point. He takes a deep breath as he stumbles through the landing, and begins clawing aside a chalky draft of snow. Gold shimmers, stilling airly around him, impermeable to the winds. Magic does not bow to the whims of such forces. 

But. Phil glances around, kicking aside more snow as he stalks the area. Nothing. 

Tommy must be close to shelter now, the thought springs forth. That’s good. 

But Wilbur - Wilbur is nowhere to be found, despite the golden magic that still lingers to whatever wisps of moonlight that have gathered enough will to suffuse back onto this plane of cold, cold existence.

He continues digging, and listening, and watching, fingers slowly losing circulation, each breath more labored.

Eventually, Phil is forced to confront a truth.

He can’t stay out here too long, not unless he wants to risk hypothermia and frostbite and-

And he can’t do that to Tommy. Or Techno. Again. 

Phil’s wings feel like melting mercury as he lifts back up into the storm, cloyed in heavy sorrow and dripping with toxic indecision. 

When he limps through the door on half-numb feet, Techno is fumbling with a blanket, shedding waves of blue over Tommy’s shoulders. 

Tommy is shaking, despite the fireplace that roars in front of him. 

“He’s - I can’t find him,” Phil says. “But I don’t think - I mean, the magic is still there-”

“I don’t believe he’s dead either,” Techno whispers as soon as Phil shuts the door tight against pummeling forces that lash against them. 

Phil bunches a fitful of feathers between his fingers, wings hissing in silent protest. Sharp keratin scrapes down into skin like needled spite.

_ Stay calm _ , he knows.  _ Stay calm. _

Because now Tommy is crying. All previous conviction stripped down, husk and all, rotting away in wisps of shadowed disbelief.

Tommy is crying. Tommy is curled up before the blazing fire with sobs ratcheting every movement, fingers twitching uselessly for some phantom assurance that Wilbur was still here with them. Tommy is - is-

“Tommy,” Phil says uselessly. His feathers tremble against the grain of invisible threads, tying them all together in a dance of regret. Too slow, too fast.

Too little, too much. 

“Tommy, I flew down there,” he continues, because despite everything, Philza has to press on. “On the way back. I couldn't find a body anywhere.” 

“Where the fuck does a body end up in the middle of a place like this?” Tommy gasps, and the bitterness leaks through harsh and clear as broken glass. “6 feet under, Phil! I’m not fucking stupid!”

The pain, and bitterness. There’s so much of it, and it drowns them all in icy realization. When did Tommy accumulate such heaviness to life? When did he learn to leave it pooled so deep within himself?

At Phil and Techno’s silence, he turns back away and closes his eyes.

“But Wilbur’s not dead,” he says, in almost the exact same way Techno did earlier. “He’s not, he can’t be - we didn’t come so close to-”

His eyes somehow shut even tighter.

“Don’t give me hope like that,” he breathes raggedly. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

“The totem gives temporary immunity for a few minutes after being set off,” Phil says, because that’s all the comfort he can provide. “Tommy, after Techno took you back here I searched for at least 20 more minutes around the area, and I couldn’t find any trace of Wilbur. The only thing I can think of is that…”

“Wilbur’s either dead,” Techno finishes with a dull note of defeat. “Or gone in a different way.”

Tommy chokes, another sob grasping his throat. Techno kneels down and slowly, shakingly wraps an arm around his shoulders.

With yet another pit of ice crawling up inside of him, Phil moves over and sits down on Tommy’s other side. A wing snakes up against their backs.

“Does he really hate me that much?” Tommy whispers. “To - to want to die?”

“No,” Techno immediately replies. There's a mirrored haze filming his eyes, some ruined backstage scene on replay.

“I think he thought he was doing what was best for us,” Phil says. Tommy makes a broken noise of protest, muffled in its inability to pursue anything but its own late remorse.

“Even if he’s still - wherever he is,” he says. “We’re still gonna look for him. Right?”

“Yes,” Phil says. The pressure lessens, just a bit, a brief respite of understanding. At the very least, despite all his failures, he can still promise this. “Yes, I - always. We’re not giving up.”

Techno nods, and stands up. He almost appears gliding as he moves to the door and presses an ear against the chilled grain. 

“Blizzard’s lessened a bit,” he says. “Phil, do you-”

“Yes,” Phil says again. Tommy presses closer into the crook of his wing, fingers scrabbling. 

“We’ll find him,” Techno says. A hand rests itself on the door’s handle, ready to slide the lock out. 

“We’ll find Wilbur,” Phil repeats. “In whatever state he’s in.”

~*~

Everything is cold. The strain of coldness that permeates beyond the skin and muscles and bone and seeps itself into the very fabric of the soul itself. The coldness that Wilbur would confront - no, be confronted by - with the questions of ancient, powerful spirits never connected to the conscience plane.

A dead mind, some might call it. Life’s parallel. Life’s paradox. To Wilbur it is a leash and it is a sentence, of breaths choked and never let go. A splint in the alignment of his being he can never right again. 

Existances that were never meant to be, and yet are. Why would the world permit such atrocity?

The world is not kind, Wilbur learned long ago. It is not cruel, either, but indifferent.

That is the cruelest truth of them all. 

And so he dreams, and the lull of existence seeps its coldness into him once again. 

~*~

“Who are you, mystery person?” There was something familiar about that poof of hair and angled face, like a wanted poster tugging from the coattails of his memory. Scott could have sworn he’s seen him somewhere before, but not in person. 

The notion is rather ridiculous, however, so he shelves the thought for later and pours a few more drops of regeneration potion into the mug half full of warm milk before him. 

_ This person better be grateful, _ Scott thinks as he tips the mug against the pale body’s lips, still cold despite having been in the warmth of his house for 3 hours. Healing potions are only getting more expensive by the day, with all the wars various nations have been waging lately. 

He should be grateful their little town hasn’t been accosted to fight on behalf of some surrounding cause, but Scott thinks that not having their independence torn to shreds is an extremely low bar. And either way…

His fingers tighten into a fist, brief and reassuring. Either way, they have their methods. 

It doesn’t change the fact that there is a man in a thin, ragged coat and the blue pale of almost gone, barely breathing on Scott’s feather mattress. Whatever had happened back there with golden shimmer was magic, death cheated in a way he’s just the slightest bit familiar with.

A Totem of Undying, Scott decides after consulting a few books that hum with latent warnings. He’s aware of the concept - but it answers one question in a sea of many.

Why was this man on the mountain in the middle of a blizzard, much higher than any place Scott had ever dared venture to? Was he taking a midnight stroll under clear skies before the storm suddenly hit as well?

But why was he  _ so _ high up? How did he even get there?  _ Why? _

Was his fall some unlucky accident? All logic points to such, with the totem as a factor, but something about his too gaunt limbs and haunted expression told Scott there was more to the story. 

Much, much more. 

And he can’t  _ get _ any of it until he wakes up!

Scott sighs, as, after a few moments, only a few drops of milk have been swallowed if at all. As though the body is subconsciously rejecting any form of life Scott is trying to coax into it. 

Well, that’s annoying. Unfortunately, the swallow reflex is not terribly strong with this one. 

But fortunately, while he’s nice, he’s not  _ that _ nice.

Scott pries the jaws open and tilts the mug again, dribbling a few drops of milk onto the tongue. 

The only response is a twitchy shudder, before the mystery guest returns to his still, nearly lifeless form. 

Well, a totem will have that effect.

A few more drops of milk, and Scott sets the mug back onto the bedside table. His bedroom is annoyingly small for a medical operation, he notes, carefully moving a few used bandages into the trash can. There are numerous bloody towels crowding a corner, and the smell of antiseptic alcohol reeks with a sting that makes Scott wish he’s underwater again. Boards of wood lay scattered, smeared with blood in his numerous unsuccessful attempts to make proper splints.

Now, the person before him is half covered in bandages, has a leg and an arm splinted, and has taken a significant chunk out of Scott’s potion supply. 

And Scott’s not even the certified doctor around here. 

He checks the time again, numbers outlined in glowing redstone powder. 

6 hours until dawn, roughly. And hopefully, the blizzard will have fully died down by then.

His head hits the table with a tired groan as he realizes he’ll have to help shovel the ridiculously massive quantities of snow, or Lizze’ll hound him about “community participation” again. 

Scott’s really not getting paid enough for any of this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was gonna update later but I got some stuff wrapped up early and decided to post in time for my birthday, lol.
> 
> Also! Been thinking of some thing and I've decided I'm gonna try something. I made a Twitch channel at <https://www.twitch.tv/interjection_>
> 
> On Sunday the 28th of February 12:00 PM EST (aka noon) I'm going to stream myself replying to any comments in my inbox. Maybe that'll motivate me to actually acknowledge all the support I've gotten, lol. I'll answer questions I get too. 
> 
> Weird concept for a Twitch stream, I know, but uhh... if you're interested then come check it out then? I'll be interacting with whatever chat exists, plus voice reveal pog? idk if that's anything interesting lol but it's just a thing I want to try out.


	16. the worst of the calms

Nothingness. For a stretch of bliss, Wilbur thinks he has achieved that elusive state of nothingness. 

And then, it is all shattered. 

When the world drags him forth, he resists, claws his soul across the empty space between stars and flounders into the deepest recesses of denial he can find. But alas, the fruits of his labor bear  _ nothing.  _

“Dear gods, you really are a problematic one,” someone says. The voice unfamiliar, leveled with slight irritation. 

“No,” Wilbur gasps with a tiny, pathetic sound, his first words to the world he’s been thrust back into. 

Gold glitters at the edge of his vision. His chest is still too cold, too dark, his heart a tempo steady to the point of unnaturalness. Like some artificial metronome has wound its strings through the chambers.

“Wow, he’s a denier too,” the voice says. 

Well, Wilbur won’t deny  _ that. _

But there’s what he has to deny - this thumping in his chest, the heat that burns against his skin like the edge of trailing fire.

He’s alive. He’s _ fucking alive.  _

The curtain flutters invitingly, the waters still and peaceful. Wilbur calls back to them, yearning. The depths are beauty and grace and everything he’ll ever wish for. They lap in waves, humming. 

Then the world shifts beneath him, soft furs and the scent of cinnamon candles. With a jolt, his sanctuary falls away.

And he’s left with blankets. Pillows. And - with a shift, he realizes. His left leg and arm are both in casts, fingers bound in cocoons. Just enough to prevent their movement.

Everything just enough to prevent his ending. 

The universe is probably laughing. 

“Who are you?” Wilbur asks instead, despite how his vision is an endless black and the familiar pressure of bandages winds around his body. 

So he fell with the intent of death and instead came back even less than before. A twisted, withering poppy now stripped of all petals.

“The person you should be thanking for saving your life,” comes the reply. 

_ No thanks,  _ Wilbur thinks. For a moment he considers if he should pursue that path of antagonization - but then again, does it really matter?

_ He wants to die. _

That had been the entire point. His symphony ended, the conductor no longer welcome. 

Though the warmth of soft blankets and a shuffling stranger tethers those thoughts against a jagged spire. Like Andromeda chained, awaiting destruction at an unknown beast. 

“You’re going to pay me for this, are you?”

Wilbur remains silent. 

A sigh, and then, a damp cloth scrapes across his face. He feels his eyes wince, furrowing in complaint at the scrubbing that intensifies further before drawing away.

Slowly, the darkness of his vision is chased away in hazy mists. Above him is a man with light eyes and pink hair a shade softer than Techno’s. 

Wilbur doesn’t recognize him. A true stranger, then, though the fact that he’s alive speaks magnitudes.

“I’m Scott,” the stranger says. “The reason you’re alive.”

“No thanks,” he croaks aloud this time. His throat burns, but at least that's nothing new. “Shouldn’t have.”

“Oh great.” Scott’s face twists in a way not unlike Tommy’s when he’s assigned what he considers a particularly unpleasant task. “So that  _ was _ a suicide attempt. I really didn’t sign up for this.”

“Bad thing to say to suicidal people,” Wilbur whispers. His words grate like steel wool inside his head, sandpapered down to a scratchy, broken record. 

Though, what does he care for a world like this? 

And he’s in no position to be lecturing strangers. 

“You’re not trying to kill yourself again, right?” Scott asks. “I don’t need more people to question my doctoring skills.”

A sear of annoyance slices down Wilbur’s throat. It catches him by surprise and he swallows, involuntarily. Why couldn’t people just  _ leave him alone? _

All he wants is peace. Is that so difficult to ask for?

“I’ll wait ‘til I’m away, then,” he says. “Do you have a knife to spare, or need I find a river?”

His “rescuer” makes a noise like an offended cat denied its favorite spot. Or Tommy, denied another request. 

The thought of Tommy sours everything again. Tommy shouldn't have to deal with any of this. He should be moving on from Wilbur, from L’Manberg. 

But Wilbur knows he isn’t. Not with the certainty of his death muddled as oily swampwater. 

A quick shift confirms the obvious - limbs bound to a prison of bandages, where duty guards and expectation lays barbed wire against every escape.

The stranger - Scott. He’s talking again. Questions or concerns, or more gripes. Wilbur lost the will to care a long time ago, 

He closes his eyes. Drowns out the clamor of bright sights and smells. The taste of fresh baked bread still wavers through his senses.

The coldness is dissipating. His heart slams, each more erratic than the last. 

The idea terrifies him.

The cold is calming. Familiar.  _ A finale. _

But he’s alive. In the warmth of living, down to suffering its consequences. Where the dust of explosions scratch his lungs and the clattering for swords ring in his nightmares. He’s been denied once, twice, thrice, will be again. 

When did death become such a sisyphean effort?

~*~

The weirdo’s fallen asleep on him again.

Scott sighs, and drags a hand across fluffy hair. It catches in tangled curls, like usual. He should find a better way to occupy his fingers.

“Well, I’m not a doctor, and I’m not a therapist,” he says. “Though I guess people do dump all their emotional problems on me around here.”

Because, well - they don’t  _ have _ a therapist. It’s a rare enough job, despite how strangely old the concept of having someone help weather mental health issues is. 

“At least I have an excuse to stay here.” Scott slices down the piece of bread before him and reaches for a nearby jar of strawberry jam. He would have liked some coffee to cope too, but his supply ran out a few days ago and it would be another month before the first traders reach their port. 

It's small moments like these that make him regret settling down in such a northern outpost. Just for a few moments. 

At least the rest of the town agreed to let him stay inside. 

_ “What if he wakes up and no one’s there?” Pete reasons in the face of Lizzie’s disgruntled expression. _

_ “Fine, fine.”  _

So, no clearing snow like everyone else! On the other hand, Scott’s not quite sure he’d rather babysit a suicidal idiot. 

Best not say that to anyone’s face. Suicide’s no joking matter - but still. 

He groans, and tries to not think too hard about it. 

By the time Scott’s finished his breakfast and the mug has only a few black tea leaves pooling at the bottom, his “patient” is stirring again. Hopefully, this time he can actually hold a conversation. One with  _ answers. _

“What’s your name?” he asks when the eyes flutter open again. A dark, swirling brown that Scott thinks was likely, once upon a time, far, far brighter. 

His guest is quiet for a long while. 

Scott pours himself another mug of tea and spoons a dollop on honey into the steaming liquid. Quills and papers are brushed aside or filed away in the drawers below, and he takes out a small box of puzzle pieces in their place.

“Will,” his guest says when the puzzle’s halfway done.

“Oh, finally!” Scott grins. “Is your mind clear enough to remember my name, or should I draw it onto your face?”

The name tugs at that feeling once again, of knowledge squirreled away in shadows just out of reach. 

“I don’t care,” Will says. He closes his eyes again.

_ “Should be dead,”  _ he mutters, just loud enough for them both to hear.

“Well, no one  _ should _ be dead,” Scott says mildly. “That’s not for anyone to decide.”

Not to say people’s lives wouldn’t be better if  _ certain _ people died, but he refrains from that particular comment. Such a pinnacle of self-constraint, he is. 

More moments drag by. Scott takes another sip of his tea. 

“Not even ourselves?” Will eventually asks. It’s a question to himself, more than anything.

Clearly, he has serious issues from his past. Scott feels a twinge of empathy - whatever Will has going on, it certainly can’t be pretty. 

“Look, it’s not my place to tell you what to do with yourself,” he says. “But in my experience most people are better off to others alive than dead. Do you have family or something?”

“I don-” Will’s expression twists. Horrified pain flashes, clearly, for a split second. 

“So you do,” Scott says. And really, he should be taking this far more seriously. But he’s not prepared for this and neither is Will, so that makes two of them.

“I shouldn’t,” Will says.

“What did they do to you?”

“No, not - it wasn’t them.” Misery wallows from his tone like a rising lagoon. “It’s all my fault. I - they shouldn’t have to deal with me.”

“So  _ you’re _ deciding things for them?” 

Will remains silent. 

Scott shrugs, and unwraps some more bread. 

“Feeling up for breakfast?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

He cuts a small, soft piece and smooths a bit of jam on it. Then he takes a spare fork and carefully brings it to Wil’s lips.

“Eat. Before people start accusing me of willfully neglecting a patient.”

With clear reluctance, Will bites. Chews. And swallows.

“Good,” Scott says. “I don’t have golden apples and you’ve gone through enough of my potions, so you’ll have to settle for normal food like the rest of us.”

“Sure,” Will mutters.

Scott shoves another piece of bread in his face. 

~*~

“What do we say to him?”

Techno and Phil both still at his question. Tommy peers into their expressions - Techno, nerve-stricken with his lips half parted. Phil, eyes wide with anxiety. Both, brimming with guilt and dread. 

He wonders how his own must look. For now Tommy settles on the floor of emotions that are just the same. With some indignance, maybe, now that there’s time for the initial shock to settle.

He shouldn’t be mad at Wilbur. He  _ shouldn’t.  _ Mental health is a bitch and he’s not the one who tried (and maybe suceeded, though that can’t really be true, it can’t) to commit suicide. 

But still. Even after everything, Wilbur’s still - making things difficult. Making Tommy’s own recovery more difficult. 

_ He shouldn’t be thinking this. _

“What do I say to him?” he whispers.

“We - we care.” Phil says, eyes glazed. He must be lost so deep, Tommy thinks. “He matters. I… I would ask what I did wrong.”

“That I’m sorry,” Techno says quietly.

Tommy looks down, at the snow that’s white and scattered with gleaming flecks in the dawning light. The moon is sinking and the sun is rising and nothing is certain. They’ve been searching for… he doesn’t know how long. Since the weather allowed them. It feels like time passes in meaningless lurches, only with the empty spaces of white they turn up. 

Wilbur is his fault. Is their fault. But…

“Would he say he’s sorry back?” Tommy mutters in a few threads of air, so soft even he can’t register words from the sounds

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shouldn’t be thinking like this. Or maybe he should, the  _ more _ he thinks about it. Not that he can ever voice the thoughts, because nothing like that is worth voicing if Wilbur would grab onto it for further excuses. 

That Wilbur should be sorry back. That he has to - well, it’s clear they all have to fix themselves. Tommy knows their family is one fuckload of problems after another. But they’ve tried so hard and Wilbur has… well, he doesn’t know what Wilbur has done. 

Tommy still doesn’t know  _ anything  _ about what went on in Wilbur’s mind, on those long, serene nights when he could close his eyes and pretend everything is normal and safe and the wars never happened.

“How are we going to convince him to - to not - you know.” He makes a vague gesture and kicks at another snowdrift. 

“To not jump off a cliff again?”

Phil flinches at Techno’s words. Tommy simply stares, and thinks,  _ yeah. That’s about right. _

“We need to say things like they are, Phil,” Techno says. “I think upfrontness is what’s goin’ to get us past this. And Wilbur knows - he just needs to agree to cooperate.”

“Cooperate,” Phil echoes. His feathers bristle up in unease.

“Yeah,” Tommy somehow finds it within himself to drawl. “Look, Phil-”

And Phil flinches, despite how Tommy has called him that for 2 years.

3 hours ago Tommy would have felt awful for it. Now he feels  _ vindicated. _

“-clearly we’ve all fucked up big time. Something has to change with Wilbur. You in or not?”

Phil closes his eyes.

“Yes,” he says without hesitation. “Always. Since Wilbur begged me to kill him and I said no.”

“So now we find him.” Techno turns to the watercolor sky, dawn in full fledge at the eastern distance. 

“You have a hunch,” Phil says. They all know it’s not a question.

Techno points at the sprawling cluster of brown and black in the distance. The air’s clear enough to make out people, spotted splashes of color wading amongst the snow.

“Great, social interaction,” Tommy says. “Your favorite, right Techno?”

“It’s a logical conclusion, despite my... grievances.”

Phil brushes out his wings and angles the edges up. 

“That’s - we should have realized sooner,” he says. “Either way, we need to check. Preferably soon.”

“Fucking now,” Tommy says. He stamps down the rising fear with an internal scowl and forces even breaths between shaking teeth. 

“Fucking now,” Phil agrees. 

~*~

“So he’s finally awake?”

“Don’t crowd him, Lizzie.”

“I don’t care,” Wilbur says. Another lie. That seems about all he can do nowadays. Like a pendulum swinging between fading and fabrication. 

“I’m Lizzie,” the new person says, sitting down on another chair Scott has pulled into the room. It’s a silvery wood, some species of larch Wilbur knows for sure doesn’t grow on this continent.

Wilbur has been pulled up to her eye level, back propped by pillows. Falling asleep is now an exponentially more difficult challenge. 

“His name is Will,” Scott provides when Wilbur doesn’t answer.

“So Will, what were you doing on the mountains that late at night?” Lizzie asks.

Wilbur turns the question over in his mind, reluctantly pulling at the cracks. Grasps for something simple to slot in. 

“Dying,” he settles on.

Speaking of which. Another shift, but moving remains a fruitless endeavor. The universe denies yet again.

Lizzie’s mouth forms an “o” for a few seconds, before she snaps her gaze away to blink back at Scott. 

Scott shrugs, in a clear case of  _ “What do you want me to do?” _ It’s funny, how Wilbur can still read people like this, even after everything. Indifference and death as two circling planets on the path of unattainable desire.

“Okay,” Lizzie says. “He’s got me there, Scott.”

“Do I at least get insured for the potions I used on him?” Scott asks. “Isn’t it, like, a  _ town _ policy to not let random strangers bleed to death if we can help it?”

“I’ll ask Shubble if we can figure something out,” Lizzie sighs. “Have fun with him, Scott.”

“Wait, when did he become  _ my _ responsibility?”

_ Didn’t ask you to take me, did I? _ Wilbur thinks bitterly. 

“When-”

“Relax, Scott, he’s not just your responsibility.”

Someone new is standing at the doorway to Scott’s room. Brown hair with tints of gray, blue eyes the texture of opals. Face carefully neutral. 

“I came to make sure that situation is cleared up before Shubble gets too much of a headache,” she adds, raising an eyebrow at Lizzie. “You won’t run out of potions, Scott.”

“Great,” Wilbur grits out. “Now if you’ll just let me leave-”

“-and you’re not leaving until some questions are answered,” the woman says. “By the way, I’m Pearl, the closest we have to a judicial authority around here.”

Judiciaries. Great. 

Well, maybe there’s some half-truths in that one. After all, history fascinates - fascinated him. The way countries work. The way they fall. L’Manberg’s court system had been near non-existent, with war leaving no time to pull one together and Schlatt later considering himself the sole authority. 

He wonders what rules this community operates by. It’s small, he knows, having seen the territory at a distance and estimated population. A thousand people at most, probably closer to 800. 

It’s enough for a full fledged government, in most places. Mayors and judges and tax collectors and rolling parchments with laws inked in blood and strife. The black grimes of society that few dare gaze upon and fewer dare poke. 

“So what is your name?” Pearl is suspicious. That’s - not good. Wilbur knows his name and image is plastered across books and paintings, a curiosity for the world to see. A foolish revolutionary turned mindless madman. It will be a lot harder to die - to escape - if they realize who he is.

“Will,” he says, too fast. 

Pearl takes out a notebook, bound black leather and crinkled pages. She reaches across Scott’s desk and drags back within reach a quill and ink pot. 

The room suddenly feels smaller than before. A lot smaller. Suffocating. Wilbur chokes down the rising pace of his breaths and forces his eyes to unfocus. 

“Lizzie, give us some room,” Pearl says. A dismissal, and with a shrug Lizzie saunters out the door. 

“So how did you  _ get  _ here?” There comes the first question.

“Be more specific,” Wilbur says, because even now, in the face of strangers, at what’s arguably an actual interrogation, at their  _ complete fucking mercy, _ he’ll  _ still _ stalling. Coward to the end, but he accepted it once and he’s not gone. How many times will he have to relent?

“Well, this mountain range surrounds us for hundreds of miles,” Pearl says, leaning closer. “It’s the middle of winter. The closest neighboring settlements are dozens of leagues away. Scott found you in the middle of the night with clothes barely fit for mid-spring around here. Something’s not adding up.”

Wilbur is silent. He calls for the curtains and it circles silently. 

“Answer the question, Will,” Pearl says, tapping his cheek with the end of the quill. The sliced edges grate like rough stone against his skin. “How did you get there?”

“I don’t owe you anything,” he says instead. 

“Pearl, where do we store our torture devices?” Scott asks. Wilbur knows it’s a joke to the two of them, and a poor attempt at bluffing for him. But he laughs dully anyway, low and desperate. Both Pearl and Scott flinch at the cracked, crying sound.

“I’ve felt far worse than whatever torture methods any of you can come up with,” he says. “You could do just about anything to me and if I don’t want to talk, I won’t talk.”

Hence, the ocean. The endless waves of drawing quiet. The curtains, the respite, the way he can sink below it all. A most useful skill, in every such scenario. 

“Well,  _ are _ you going to answer the question?” Pearl asks.

To paint the picture complete is out of the question. Wilbur knows, and for the first time allows himself to ease back a singular layer. One of countless films. 

He can’t reveal Phil. Or Tommy. Or Techno. Hopefully, they’ll finally get some peace and quiet without him.

Everything would be completely shattered if word got out that Technoblade, famed Blood God, is lurking around the mountains. That Philza, conqueror of the End, is with him. That Tommy Innit-

He wants to choke at the thought of Tommy. If Dream or Tubbo ever realize - no, they can’t,  _ they can’t- _

_ And who’s stopping them if they do? _

The fire burns higher inside of him. He hates it even more than before.

“A horse and stupid amounts of luck,” he says. Lets his eyes dull over. Masks stiffness with tones of annoyance. “The creature died a few days ago and I somehow survived longer.”

“Really,” Pearl says. She’s not - skeptical isn’t the right word, if only because it makes up only a part of her reaction. 

“You’re definitely hiding something more,” Scott says. Experience ensures that Wilbur doesn’t show outward signs of change, but a bright bloom of panic flares within his chest. 

_ They can’t know. _

He shrugs. 

“Where are you from?” Pearl asks. “A specific nation? Independent settlement?”

“The fuck if I know,” Wilbur says.  _ Play it calm. Play it safe. _

_ You idiot, you choose now of all times to finally be careful? _

It’s technically true, at least - he grew up along the coastal cities of Pyserne, that continent which houses the likes of the Dream SMP, but it doesn’t mean he remembers which one. Any memory of biological parents has long since faded into hazy wisps of warm hands and soft whispers. 

Phil is the only parent he’s ever had, absent as he was. Who didn’t abandon him, until he did.

_ Or did he? _

No, he-

_ You abandoned yourself. Phil tried to fly after you. _

Denial of that is impossible. 

Pearl glances around, eyebrows furrowed. He sees the moment her eyes click, pupils darting inwards.

_ Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck- _

“Scott,” she says. “Can we have a moment alone?”

Wilbur wants to tighten his grip on the blankets and rip them away. He wants to storm out that door and across the town and into the cold, icy ocean and smash his head bloody against the sea-shorn rocks. 

But he is here, and he can’t leave.

“Sure. Have fun!” Scott closes the door on his way out, too fast and too eager. 

“So,” Pearl says when the room is silent, save for a rhythmic scratching her quill and Wilbur’s labored breaths. 

“Fuck off,” he grumbles. He sees her lips quirk up. 

“Wilbur Soot.”

“What?” Despite the expectation, the name still twists his lungs all the same. He keeps his eyes away, on the puzzle Scott left nearly finished on the desk. 

Just a piece left, but incomplete. How unfair. 

“That’s you, isn’t it?” Pearl asks. “Wilbur Soot.”

“No.”

Pearl’s eyebrows raise incredulously. 

“I can pull up the drawings if you want.”

“Fuck off,” Wilbur says again.

“You know, there’s not much point denying it. And I have to tell at least the town council soon.”

_ They know. They’ll all know.  _

He can’t, people will come, they’ll find Tommy-

He was all self-denial, bright smiles. Repelling solutions like same-sided magnets. What changed?

_ Accountability, _ his mind scrounges up from its sludgy recesses.  _ Accountability. _

_ He hasn’t paid his debts yet. _

_ He had tried dying anyway. _

“And what will that do to this place?” Wilbur asks. 

Pearl freezes.

“What?”

“Loose tongues, Pearl,” Wilbur says. “Do you really want L’Manberg or the Dream Kingdom to come knocking at your doorstep?”

She presses her lips in a thin line. The quill writes faster than before. 

“I’ll take that into consideration,” she says, voice hard. “But it’s been 3 months since the Desolation of L’Manberg.”

“Not particularly desolate, last I heard.”

_ Play your cards right. _ It’s been so long since Wilbur willingly engaged in this game. But he has to. 

Is that willing? What choice has he left? 

“What are you  _ doing _ here?” Pearl asks, and there’s that tint of disbelief Wilbur expected. “Most people think you died. Blew yourself up.”

“That was the plan,” Wilbur says. “Then the cliff was the plan. My plans are so wonderfully reliable, as you can tell.”

Bitterness crawls out his mouth like maggots from a rotting carcass, and he allows it. Turn the subject. Draw the attention where it should be. What else? Anything but questions of Tommy. 

“So you’re admitting you’re Wilbur Soot now?”

Wilbur shrugs. 

“An entire ocean away,” Pearl says. “And with - Scott says you had a totem on you.”

He shrugs again, movement slow and stiff. 

The totem. That explains it. It’s yet another time he’s underestimated Phil. The coldness explained, in half a puzzle. 

...does Phil really want him alive that much? For what? He’s useless now, the least of all to himself. 

“You said you’re the judicial authority,” Wilbur says, turning the line of thought away. He’s not ready to answer it yet, and will never be ready. 

“Oh, sort of,” Pearl says. She bites the hook, eyes knowing. Wilbur supposes he should appreciate that. “I’m the one people call in to resolve disputes. Apparently, my lack of family around here makes me an ideal candidate.”

“Usually helps.”

“Won’t deny it,” she replies. “So I judge cases, and all that. Our judicial system isn’t terribly defined, beyond just asking me and sometimes the town council. There’s prosecution and defense if it’s serious enough, but it rarely ever is.”

“And who leads the place?”

“We have the town council, as I mentioned,” Pearl says. “12 seats, all voted in. They make the laws and all that, though there’s not that much lawmaking to be had with a place like Sanctuary - that’s the town’s name, by the way. Things mostly just stay the same. Scott, Shubble, and me take turns representing us in relations or agreements with other places.”

It’s the opposite of L’Manberg, in structure. The same building blocks and an entirely different geometry. Granted, L’Manberg’s population probably numbers at around 60,000 even after all the wars, but still. It scales up, and up.

Until it doesn’t.

“You would know of successful nations, wouldn’t you?” Pearl asks, and there’s hesitance now. 

“No,” he says shortly. “Nothing good in L’Manberg ever happened because of me.”

He makes a tiny motion with his tightly bound arm. It’s his left one, too.

Pearl watches him silently. 

Wilbur doesn’t need to justify anything. But he somehow finds himself talking anyway.

“L’Manberg’s successes are now my failures,” he says.  _ Keep it on L’Manberg, on me.  _ “I intended for it to end that day. Have Dream absorb it all back, or whatever.”

“Well, I suppose in a way it did die,” Pearl says. “People have started calling it ‘New L’Manberg’ under the Tubbo administration. I think the name will stick.”

“Probably,” Wilbur says. “They want to cut it all off from me. I feel the same way.”

_ His symphony.  _

When the rain is over and quiet comes like death whispering softly - but it passes by as well with a soft twirl and leaves him still waiting in clouds and sunlight - what does he do?

_ What does it matter? _

_ My L’Manberg.  _

_ Their L’Manberg. _

“Special place,” he murmurs, and thinks of governments. Of the fairness of courts and manmade systems. Successes and failures. They’re all so relative. 

“And they trust you as the sole judicial authority?”

“Well, if enough people think I’m doing a bad job, they can just chase me out,” Pearl says. “We pretty much all know each other. I imagine it’s much harder with a full fledged nation.”

“But familiarity isn’t a thing we can just have,” Wilbur says. “It’s why we have judicial systems in the first place.”

Or watch it all crumble apart, like L’Manberg did.

He’s not living in a nation anymore. It’s a lawless land, with his family, who’ve always disregarded such things as minor nuisances. 

“Well-”

“Pearl, we have more visitors!” Scott’s muffled voice sounds from the door. “Three of them. I think they’re looking for Will.”

_ Fuck. _

They can’t, they can’t, why would they come here-

Pearl shoots him a questioning look. Wilbur flattens his expression to the exact same as before. Always the actor. 

His family is here. They’re going to confront him. He’ll have to explain. 

And whereas before there was the guaranteed release of the cliffs, here he has nothing. Nothing but bandages and lies, and the mockery of a system that works. 

Everyone will be watching. Their cover is blown. Wilbur’s failed, yet again, on so many levels. 

There’s nowhere to hide now, in this tiny, suffocating room with a Pearl that’s standing up and walking over to the door. Nowhere to hide from Phil’s pain, Techno’s distress, Tommy’s ever-increasing well of disappointment that will only flood further with the realization of what Wilbur’s done. 

They can’t know. No one can know. They were supposed to be safe, to be  _ away.  _ Away from the wreckage of everything he’s created. 

_ Why did he leave them. Why isn’t he better. Why hasn’t anything worked. Why does he make things so difficult. Why. Why. Why. _

_ Why.  _

He can’t breath but he must. He can’t think but he must. He can’t hide but he must. Forever a paradox. 

_ Can’t. _

_ But he must.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Wilbur’s name as “Will” is a truly cursed experience. Never again. 
> 
> I finally made a Discord! Join to be notified of new chapters and discuss stuff! <https://discord.gg/bhvEjkwcCU>  
> And lot of writers have them, but I wanted one with a lens on fanfiction, writing, and lore discussion, so while all sorts of discussion is welcome and it's perfectly fine if you're just there to notifications, if you want to talk about analysis of lore or writing in general then hopefully we can build a community around that! I also hope people will help each other with writing advice. 
> 
> The Sunday after I posted last chapter, I livestreamed responding to every comment while interacting with chat! It was a lot of fun! I’m doing it again on Sunday the 7th, this time at 5:00 PM EST! Sorry for the short notice! Find me here: <https://www.twitch.tv/interjection_>
> 
> Things that chat did during the previous livestream:
> 
> -Start a crow cult  
> -Spam E  
> -Actually discuss DSMP lore
> 
> Beta reader sweet_magnolias also calculated that Wilbur was falling off the cliff for 11.75 seconds and did indeed reach terminal velocity! Fun times!
> 
> Also made a Twitter because after years of lurking I'm finally committing to a social media presence: <https://twitter.com/lnterjection>
> 
> It’s been a very tiring week, hence why I had originally planned to extend the break to early March. Wanted to get this chapter out on Thursday, but got really distracted with other stuff (uhh check out [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29810847) fic I wrote of everyone responding to Tommy’s death, which aged _extremely_ ~~poorly~~ well). Then I was very busy the entirety of Friday so here we go.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my ~~no longer so new~~ tumblr, questions welcome: <https://lnterjection.tumblr.com/>


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